


Down the Rabbit Hole

by Gohandinhand



Series: All in the Golden Afternoon [4]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Baby!Fic, Bechloe babies, Childbirth, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Pregnancy, This is so crunchy that it makes a noise when you step on it, Yes this is pure fluff again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5117396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gohandinhand/pseuds/Gohandinhand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice Mitchell had to come from somewhere. Unlike Athena, she didn't spring fully-formed from her parent's skull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Down the Rabbit Hole

Beca Mitchell hadn’t ever pictured kids as part of her life. She realizes that that’s probably not a shocking thing to hear, given one look at her.

Successful producer and artist who has a busy life in the music industry? A propensity to always don leather on her person in some form? Multiple tattoos and a blatantly displayed “fuck off” attitude? A habit of getting in trouble for lashing out at paparazzi? Check, check, check, and check.

Oh, and, you know  - a wife. 

But, truth be told, Beca wasn’t really completely opposed to the idea. Beyond her plans to make a career out of music, Beca’s idea of the future had always been incredibly vague – probably marry some cute guy, maybe not, and live in a house in the LA hills with room for a home recording studio. Beca didn’t actively dislike children, but she was absolutely unwilling to ever be pregnant or carry a child – the very idea horrified her - and so kids hadn’t ever been part of the nebulous idea of her American Dream.

But the day Beca agreed to hitch her cart to Chloe Beale for good, Beca knew that everything she had tenuously drawn out for her future was out the window. There was no way in hell that bubbly, happy, “squeals and coos over random babies in public” Chloe Beale was going to be satisfied with a house full of music and recording equipment instead of irritatingly noisy light-up toys and scattered legos.

 

So Beca redrew her plans. As long she wasn’t going to have to do any of the hard work of growing a human being and dealing with her body essentially being under the control of an invader for the better part of a year, kids were fine. Sign her up!

 Of course, Chloe did. Literally. She waited until they’d had two years to settle into their new life in LA before signing them up for some ridiculous workshop for LGBT couples and their “family building options”. Beca hated every moment, making no attempt to hide her scowl or how she tuned out the lecturer, and daydreaming about how she’d rather be spending the gorgeous summer day at the beach. At the end of the 4-hour prison sentence, Beca turned to Chloe in the car and stated that (obviously, Beca thought, but tactfully left that part out) they would find a sperm donor and Chloe would carry the baby and that would be that.

Chloe simply nodded.

 

What it came down to was that Beca didn’t _mind_ kids, but she wasn’t super invested in the idea… and she kind of wanted to strangle Chloe when it took her six extra weeks of indecisiveness to choose between donor #21NHS and #TRC12. Because, “21NHS had a grandfather with heart problems, but TRC12 only has his BA in anthropology compared to his Ph.D. in biochemistry!” Beca patiently discussed the same points over and over so not to upset Chloe with a “lack of interest” in the overly clinical part of the process, but the twelfth time reminding Chloe that the donor’s financial status, educational level, and even his height wasn’t directly heritable was starting to feel a lot more like torture than starting a family.

Chloe’s goal was to select a donor that resembled Beca as much as possible, and despite Beca pointing out the flaws in that logic (such as the fact that any man who met the minimum 5’9” height requirement to donate meant that they’d have little in common with her tiny 5’2” form), Chloe was excellent at maintaining her selective hearing and attention.  

When Chloe finally made up her mind about which donor to choose, Beca rejoiced – until Chloe immediately started dithering about the decision again. Beca, thinking fast, managed to distract Chloe before they hit the critical point.

“Chlo, isn’t it sort of bizarre that we could pass by our future kid’s father in the street and never know? I’m kind of weirded out about that.”

“Beca, _ten million_ people live in LA. That’s statistically unlikely. And… I don’t know, Becs, being half of the genetic makeup of our kid doesn’t mean he’s the  _father_ , you know? Being a dad isn’t just about genetics -“

“Yeah, and my dad is case in point on that one. I know what you’re saying; I’m not, like, feeling insecure about being displaced by some mystery dude or blah blah blah, it’s just… weird. That someone can be part of something so momentous and not have a clue, you know? …And now I want to know what the actual statistics are. I’m texting Jessica.”

“Beca Mitchell, _do not_ tell her why you’re asking!”

 

 

 

 

The next day, Beca stumbled out of their bedroom after a nap to find Chloe sitting at the kitchen table. Spread in front of her was enough paperwork to have used at least one full tree, separated into several individual mounds. Chloe looked up and smiled at Beca, who made quite a sight with one side of her hair – the side she normally sleeps on - smooshed up and tangled around one of her ear piercings, the other side still in the neat waves she’d styled to go to the studio earlier that morning.

She held out her arms and Beca let out a yawn as she sunk into Chloe’s lap, slumping into her chest for warmth as she shivered slightly in the cooler air of the open room. Chloe folded her arms around Beca’s slight form and pressed a kiss against her hairline, and Beca hummed in contentment as Chloe’s warmth seeped into her.

“What’s all this?” Beca gestured at the papers, her voice still hoarse from sleep.

“Well, this is the paperwork to deal with our insurance for the fertility coverage stuff – pretty much done, we just have to fill a few more things in – and the booklet of in-network doctors we have to choose from. So I looked them all up and pulled up information about their practices, success rates, pricing if I could find it, all that good stuff.” Chloe explained. Pointing at each stack as she listed it off, Chloe gestured to the rest of the piles. “So we have to choose between Dr. Jabara, Dr. March, Dr. Rodi, Dr. Beavers, Dr. Marrs, and-“

“Wait!” Beca interrupted her recitation. “You’re telling me we can choose a doctor named _Doctor Beavers_?!” Chloe just nodded in response, a smile playing at her lips as Beca laughed uproariously. “Yeah. Okay. Decision made.” Beca said once she gained control of herself, resolutely scooping up the appropriate mound and making a show of knocking the stack against the table until it was perfectly aligned. “There’s no way in hell that we’re _not_ going to have someone named Dr. Beavers help make our kid.”

Chloe acquiesced with the choice– partially because she was well-familiar at this point with Beca’s whims and stubbornness, but also partially (largely, if she was being perfectly honest) because she also found “Dr. Beavers” hilarious.

Beca was happy to let her juvenile reputation take the fall for that one, though.

 

 

The IUI process was…. much stranger than Beca had been anticipating. Somehow, she’d never put much thought into exactly how that whole “insemination” thing actually happened. (Perhaps on purpose?) The tanks of frozen sperm that they’d ordered were one of the strangest things Beca had ever tried to wrap her head around. And the sight of a balding middle-aged man between her wife’s legs spread in the detested stirrups, shooting some stranger’s spunk all up in there was _extremely awkward_ to be privy to.  And for all her amusement about their reproductive endocrinologist being named Dr. _Beavers_ , of all things, Beca soon realized that she was far too awkward to actually use his name at all when he was about to be in her wife’s vagina. Chloe had a difficult time restraining her laughter every time Beca, tongue-tied, tripped over her words trying to talk in circles to avoid the necessity of directing the doctor by name. (And Beca suspected she made a point of using his name _more_ than necessary to see how many times she could get Beca to blush, but she couldn’t prove it unless Chloe chose to confess, which she hadn’t - yet.)

And when the first month wasn’t successful, Beca _still_ wasn’t any more prepared for her discomfort with the whole situation on the repeat attempts as summer slipped into fall. 

 

 

 

 

A few days after Thanksgiving, Beca was hard at work in her office deeply zoned in to the track she was fiddling with, when a message alert popped up on her computer – the only person who was set to bypass the “do not disturb” filter was Chloe – and pulled her out of her total immersion.  Chloe’s message contained nothing but a picture, and not one of the selfies Chloe was prone to sending her throughout the week. It was a conglomeration of numbers and big words and Beca, still coming out of her daze, blinked blearily at it as she tried to decipher what she was seeing.

 

 

 

 

It took her a full twenty seconds to realize what she was looking at, and once the realization hit her, the shock kept her frozen for thirty more.

Then she moved. She tapped on Chloe’s name as she swiped the phone up to her ear, then shook anxiously in her chair and chewed on her finger as she waited for Chloe to answer. It only took two rings before Chloe picked up, obviously having been waiting just as anxiously for Beca to call. She didn’t even squeeze out a hello before her flabbergasted laughter sounded in Beca’s ear.

“Chlo. I need… Tell me what I’m looking at here.  I need you to _tell_ me.” Beca pleaded.

Chloe let out one more breathless laugh before she could form words.  “Dr. Beavers –“

“ _Chloe_!” Beca growled out ominously, and Chloe had to let out a giggle at her own inability to miss taking an opportunity to rile Beca up before she could continue.

“That’s the result from my blood test. My hCG level is 69 which _Dr. Beavers_ said is ‘a  positive result’, Becs.”

“Positive? Positive for… So… that means…” Beca whispered in shock.

“I’m pregnant, Becs.” Beca swore she could feel Chloe’s indubitable grin through the phone. “He said that my beta level is perfectly average, smack dab in the middle of the range. We’ll have to test it again a couple of times in the next few days so we can make sure it’s rising appropriately, but he said based on this first reading he thinks it’s viable and that having twins or something is unlikely.”

“Oh my god, Chlo!” Beca breathed out, still stunned and struggling to keep up with Chloe’s words. “That’s –  I – So… We’re having a baby? Oh my god, we’re having a _baby_!” Beca couldn’t even begin to contain her elation over the news.

“We’re having a baby, Becs.” Chloe sniffled in confirmation.

Hearing Chloe lapse into tears broke the little restraint Beca had left, and the water she had been blinking back spilled over.  She searched her desk frantically for a tissue, giving up when she couldn’t find any and letting out an embarrassed sniffle instead.

“Becs, are you _crying_?” Chloe asked incredulously.

“No!” Beca denied, and then sniffled again. Chloe let out a watery laugh, shaking her head even though she knew Beca couldn’t see her.

“Okay, Becs.” Chloe teased. “You can cry about having a kid, that’s not going to wreck your ‘badass rep’. No one’s going to judge you for that.”

Beca let out a watery laugh of her own, slipping easily into the familiar dynamic.

“Whatever, Chloe. You can’t prove anything. Maintenance of my reputation is very important.” Beca paused for a few seconds, thinking, then continued a little more soberly. “I’m coming home, Chlo.”

“What? Right now? Becs, it’s only 3:30. Aren’t you supposed to be there for another… what, three hours today?”

“Chlo, I can do whatever the hell I want. I’ll work from home later if it makes you feel better, but I’m coming home.”

Chloe capitulated right away, already on her way home herself. Beca scooped up her stuff and waved at Gia as she scampered out the front door of the studio, shouting that she’d explain later but she was headed home for the day and not even waiting for a response before letting the door slam shut behind her.

 

 

 

 

Beca managed not to leave work _particularly_ early the two times in the following week when Chloe reported to her the follow-up results – numbers rising perfectly, according to Dr. Beavers. But even the new band she’d been working with for all of three weeks noted her obvious distraction. She had to work at not being too obvious as she played it off; she and Chloe had decided not to share the news with anyone until the safety of the second trimester. And as the media had started showing more interest in Beca as Grammy season approached, she was particularly worried about the news being leaked to the tabloids. That meant – Beca sighed to herself as she calculated – another two months of explaining away her weird behavior at work.

 Beca was in for a rough couple of months; but then, Chloe wasn’t much better. She _almost_ slipped up at least twice a week, and the only reason her fumbling cover ups were taken at face value was how accustomed everyone was to Chloe being, well, _Chloe_.

 

Chloe’s first ultrasound ended up being scheduled right on the day Chloe hit six weeks, and both women took the entire day off to devote to the appointment and each other. Beca insisted there was no way in hell she was going to miss it. The clinical, research-oriented part of the whole process they’d started during the summer was – well, book learning had never been Beca’s favorite thing, to put it lightly. But now that the baby – _their_ baby - was an actual living thing, Beca was all in. They were able to hear the heartbeat for the first time, and Beca was even able to look past the awkwardness of the ultrasound wand having to be inserted for a transvaginal ultrasound – Beca had thought the time of “watching old dudes stick things in my wife’s vagina” had passed, but apparently she was wrong – to get emotional about the momentous occasion. This time it was Beca’s tears that set off Chloe’s.

 

If Chloe caught Beca crying over the print-out of the ultrasound _several_ times later that week, or caught a glance of Beca’s email account filling up with “Your baby week-by-week” emails from multiple different sites – well, it’s likely she just smiled and didn’t mention it.

 

 

 

 

 

When Chloe reached eight weeks without incident they decided it wasn’t _really_ failure if they shared their news with a few select people. They wanted to deliver the news as “face to face” as they could, what with being across the country from everyone else now, so they Skyped with Chloe’s parents and then each of her brothers in turn. When they Skyped with Aubrey next, Beca summed up the first experience with the Beales with an eyeroll and an explanation of “there were too many tears.” (Chloe couldn’t resist pointing out that some of which were hers; Beca ignored this and moved the conversation on with her chin held high.)

When they told the rest of the Bellas the following week – Chloe needed the extra time to figure out how to work a Google hangout so they could video chat with the whole group at the same time – the reactions were pretty much as expected. Amy immediately started listing off weird pieces of advice that were “Australian tradition” (Beca very much doubted that feeding the baby nothing but kangaroo milk for the first two years was a common Australian custom, for instance). Stacie made a couple of vagina jokes and then immediately started checking with her industry contacts about which doctors to refer them to. Emily, Jessica, and Ashley all cried, and Lily asked about the dimensions for the future nursery and how sturdy their current weapons cabinet was.

So, it went well.

 

Everything was going well, actually. And it kind of freaked Beca out. Chloe was nearing the end of the first trimester and all of the email subscriptions and websites and okay, _yes, even a few books_ , were full of reassurance that “morning sickness will start waning soon.”

But Chloe hadn’t had… any, really. Occasional nausea, but nothing particularly disruptive, and she’d only puked twice the entire pregnancy – one of which she still insisted was due to bad food. Her boobs were a little sore, and maybe marginally bigger, but they couldn’t really tell and she was still fitting into her usual bras so it didn’t really matter. She was a tiny bit more tired than usual – but only capitulated to that by heading to bed about a half-hour earlier than she used to. There was none of the “bone-deep weariness” that other women of the same gestation were complaining about, and Chloe hadn’t taken up the napping habit that Beca had halfway expected.

So, Beca did what she did best and worried. She worried that Chloe not feeling sick meant that something was wrong, and then she felt awful for basically _wanting_ her wife to feel terrible and vomit all the time and not have enough energy to get out of bed. When she started worrying that her worrying was going to make her a bad mom, Chloe stopped her in her tracks by grabbing her and forcing her to eat a few marshmallows before making out with her for awhile, so at least the last worry got put to bed for awhile due to distraction.

And Beca found it _really_ helped when the worries literally got “put to bed” when Chloe attempted to sidetrack her.

 

 

 

 

They saw Dr. Beavers for the final time when Chloe was 9.5 weeks along. He did one last ultrasound (everything looked perfect, he repeatedly assured Beca) and Beca was the only one who cried while hearing the heartbeat again, something the doctor looked a tiny bit disconcerted about, before cheerfully discharging them from the practice to start seeing a regular OB/GYN.

After they spent a week looking through their options and speaking to a few different practices on the phone, Chloe turned to Beca with an anxious look on her face one night over dinner.

“Becs, don't freak out. I don’t want you to freak out when you hear what I’m about to say, okay?”

Beca stared at her unmoving and eyes wide for a moment before responding. “Erm, Chlo, when you start off with _that_ , it just makes me want to freak out _before_ I even hear it.” She took a deep breath and held it for a second before blowing it noisily out. “No, okay, I lied actually. I don’t _want_ to freak out. Now I already _am_ freaking out so I need you to spit the rest out, like, now, okay? Are you okay? Is something wrong?  Oh my god, is the baby okay? Is something wrong with the baby? Do we need to go to the hospital? What do you need me to do?” Beca spat the questions at her wife in rapid-fire, getting more and more worked up as she spiraled down into the grip of the worst-case scenarios she harbored in her mind.

Chloe gaped at how quickly the situation had deteriorated before jumping out of her chair and crossing around the table to where Beca was seated. She gripped her firmly and turned her so that Beca was looking straight at her, and then Chloe cut off the frantic queries that Beca was still regurgitating.

“Becs! BECA! No! Everything is fine, I’m fine, the baby is fine. God, I’m so sorry. Take a breath, please.” Chloe pulled her into a tight hug and Beca shuddered a ragged breath into her shoulder.

“Fuck.” She breathed weakly on her next exhale, trying to match her uneven breaths to Chloe’s more steady rhythm. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Chloe.” She said as she lifted her head off Chloe’s collarbone a couple of minutes later to look her in the eye. 

Chloe looked more contrite than Beca had ever seen her, clearly cut up about the panic she had unintentionally sent her wife into. “I’m so sorry, babe. I was just trying to prepare you for an idea that I’m not sure you’ll like.  I was _not_ trying to freak you out like that, I swear.”

“I know, I know.” Beca soothed her now-distraught wife. “It’s not even your fault, really. I’ve just been… kind of on edge about something going wrong. It only took a tiny nudge to send me over that edge since I’ve been dangling myself off of it for weeks.”

Chloe snorted. “Yeah, hon. You haven’t been doing a good job hiding your anxiety at all, just for the record. Who would have suspected that out of the two of us, _you_ were going to turn out to be the helicopter parent?”

Beca shot Chloe a mock glare at the teasing, then her expression morphed into something almost – entreating? “Yeah, I just, uh… “ Beca swallowed twice before she was able to bring herself to continue. “I’ve just been… it’s like, I still can’t believe I’m married to _you_ , Chlo. I’ve spent every single day of the last nine years in total disbelief that I get to have _you_ because I have never been the person that lucky things happen to. And you are the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me. And then here we are in LA and I got my fucking _dream job_ by some random happenstance… and now we’re having a baby. _Chloe Beale and I are having a baby_ which just… My life is so good right now, Chloe. _Our_ life is so good it’s fucking amazing and I can’t even really wrap my head around it, so I’ve been sitting here for the last 2 months waiting for the other shoe to drop because it has to drop at some point, right? I’m not a lucky person, things can’t just stay this good. And I want to be prepared, I don’t want to be taken off guard when the shoe finally drops. I won’t be able to take that, not again, Chlo.” Both women were openly weeping by the end of her outburst, and Chloe could feel her heart breaking for her wife as Beca’s last sentence sunk in.

Of course, this was about her parents. The parents that maintained a cordial but distant contact with their only daughter because of the life choices they disagreed with.  The parents that had passed down a lifetime of anxiety and mistrust to their daughter through their own poorly handled relationship troubles. Beca had spent quite a bit of time in therapy dealing with the legacy of her broken childhood and troubled adolescence, and 99% of the time it was possible to forget how far Beca had come and how much she had grown in the last decade.

But this was the 1% of the time, when Beca’s past clung tightly enough that she was afraid to trust her happiness for fear of lurking instability.

Chloe briefly felt a swell of pure, hot rage at Beca’s parents, immediately tamping it down before Beca noticed and assumed it was directed at her. She tugged a stiff and still silently crying Beca out of her chair, sitting down in her place before pulling Beca back down into her lap and cradling her into her body. Beca fought it briefly, rigid in Chloe’s embrace, before giving in and curling into Chloe with a strangled sob.

“Beca, Beca, Beca.” Chloe murmured as she brushed Beca’s hair back with her fingers soothingly. “Honey. I don’t… I can tell you that nothing is wrong right now. Actually, everything is perfect, because _you_ are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I thank the stars every day for you. Literally, you know? Every morning when I wake up with you sleeping next to me, your hair in my mouth at all, I spend a minute smiling at the sun and thanking whoever or whatever might be listening that this gets to be my life. That _you_ get to be my life. And now I get to wake up in the morning and be thankful that I get to have you and this baby in my life from now on, and I literally cried with happiness yesterday, Becs. Which was why your hair was a little damp when you woke up.” Chloe laughed through her tears. “And I can’t promise that nothing will be wrong in the future, I’m not clairvoyant…. But I can _promise_ you that if that shoe of yours ever does drop, I’m going to be right here next to you helping you catch it. You’re not the only one that has to hold it up any more.”

Beca’s emotions were still running high – higher than any other time Chloe had been witness to, with two exceptions – and she could only bring herself to nod several times against Chloe’s body while the sobs continued to rip out of her unbidden. Chloe sat and waited patiently, sporadically rocking in a calming motion and hugging Beca tightly to her the whole time, even as her legs went numb. All she could do was offer comfort while Beca struggled to rein in her tumultuous emotions, her heart hurting for Beca’s internal struggle. Eventually, Beca cried herself out and fell into an exhausted sleep in Chloe’s arms. Chloe carried her to bed, smiling sadly to herself as she did so, at the scene that had become so familiar over the years – although not usually tinged with so much sadness.

Chloe returned to the kitchen to choke down a few bites of the cold and long-forgotten dinner – she wasn’t hungry after all of that, but she felt obligated to eat at least a little bit due to that whole “growing a human being” thing. She tucked the rest of the leftovers away into the fridge before heading back to their bedroom. She changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth quietly, peeking in on Beca twice while she did so, although Beca didn’t stir even a bit. It was barely eight, but Chloe was just as exhausted from the emotional evening and she gratefully crawled into bed; but before she could cuddle into her tear-stained wife, she had one last thing to do. She grabbed her phone off her nightstand and shot an email off to Beca’s therapist back in Georgia, inquiring about the possibility of setting up a Skype session in the next week. The check-in would do Beca good, Chloe knew, as much as it upset her to admit that she wasn’t able to be everything Beca needed sometimes, that she wasn’t able to just _fix_ it.

But Beca didn’t need rescuing, she just needed an objective party to remind her of her own strength.

That taken care of, Chloe nestled happily into Beca’s side, the tinier figure automatically shifting to wrap herself around Chloe. As Beca’s hair landed in her mouth, Chloe couldn’t help but laugh even as she sputtered.

Yeah, this was right where she wanted to be, Chloe thought, as she drifted off.

 

 

 

 

Chloe woke, as always, before Beca the next morning and started cooking up Beca’s favorite Nutella French toast.  She deserved something special after the previous night, after all. She was almost done when Beca walked out of the bedroom, still yawning and eyes tiny from sleep. She stole up behind Chloe and wrapped her arms around her midsection and planting her chin on Chloe’s shoulder – as best she could, anyway.  She made a show of a dramatic sniff and hummed happily when she realized what Chloe was making.

“Good morning. Nutella french toast? Fuck, this is the best day ever.” Beca said, as she moved to plate a couple of pieces already cooling on the stack, sighing in pleasure as she stuck her nose in the small pile to take another big whiff. “Thank you.” Beca pressed a kiss to Chloe’s temple. She wrinkled her nose a bit when Chloe just hummed contentedly in response. Beca gently angled Chloe’s head towards her with her free hand, meeting her eyes intently. “ _Thank you_ , Chlo.”

Chloe nodded and simply gave Beca a quick kiss, clearly aware of how little she liked making a big deal of emotional matters.

Halfway through breakfast, Beca awkwardly cleared her throat before broaching the topic weighing on her mind. “So, uh… what were you even going to say last night?”

Chloe’s mouth dropped into an “O” shape – it had completely slipped her mind, to be honest. Now it was her turn to swallow nervously before answering. 

“Oh. Uh. Right. Well, after looking into all those OBs this week… I just don’t get a great vibe off of any of them? I mean, at _least_ one of them was clearly homophobic.  They all seem to be paternalistic older guys and… I really can’t imagine that feeling patronized the whole time is going to be conducive to easily pushing a human being out of my vagina, you know?.”

Beca grimaced at the mental image Chloe was evoking, but nodded for her to continue.

“Right. Well. Along with the OB recommendations she sent us, Stacie included a couple of… other recommendations.” Frankly, the tone Chloe was using and the way she stressed the last two was about to send Beca’s eyebrows up into her hairline.

“Okay… so, what ‘other recommendations’ did she send? The baby can’t be delivered by, like, a sexologist or whatever.” Chloe snorted at Beca’s theory.

“No, not a sexologist, Bec. But she did include information for a couple of local midwives.”

“Wait a second. Midwives still exist?” Beca asked incredulously. “I thought that was, like, a total ‘olden days’ thing. That… Stacie sent… How is that _safe_?”

“Oh, it’s totes modernized now, Becs. The ones Stacie sent are both Certified Nurse Midwives. So they go through full nursing school, and then a masters program for the additional midwife certification. They have _tons_ of training and while they’re less, you know, medicalized than OBs – who are trained first and foremost as surgeons, you have to remember – they still use all sorts of modern medicine and methods and all.” Chloe explained.  Beca had clearly accidentally triggered her “lecture mode”.

Beca nodded thoughtfully, and Chloe could see she was really thinking and considering what Chloe was presenting. She winced internally, suspecting that the next part was going to shut Beca right down.

 “Neither of them do deliveries at the hospital, but they both do deliveries at home or at the birth center –“

“Whoa whoa whoa, hold up.” Beca cut her off. “They do deliveries at _home_? Like, their home or the pregnant person’s home? Wait, why am I even asking, I don’t think that makes a difference. At _home_? You can’t be serious, Chloe. No way in _hell_ can that be safe. You haven’t even had a baby before.  For all we know, you could be prone to like, hemorrhaging, or some other scary complication, and –“

“I know, Becs, I know.” Chloe cut Beca off in turn and attempted to soothe her. “I’m not even sure how I feel about the homebirth thing, but I figured you wouldn’t be comfortable with it and we both need to be comfortable with the decision. So I wasn’t even really considering that option. But… would you maybe be open to meeting with the midwives and taking a tour of the birth center? It still has a lot of the safety features and capabilities a hospital has, but it’s much more laid-back and natural birth friendly, and the midwives spend a lot more time and attention on personal care and connecting with the client and I… I’m realizing that maybe that’s more important to me than I thought it would be?” Chloe rushed out, uncharacteristically nervous.

Beca quietly observed Chloe for several long moments, taking in her unnatural posture and contemplating how important this seemed to be to her wife.

“Okay.” She finally agreed. “Let me like, read up on a little first? But… yeah, I think we can at least meet them and see what we think.” Chloe squealed and raced around the table – so reminiscent of the night before, but this time with joy, to press delighted kisses across Beca’s face.

“Ew, Chloe.” Beca joked, pretending to wipe slobber from her face. Chloe stuck her tongue out at Beca before plopping herself back down in her chair and unceremoniously devouring the rest of her breakfast. It seemed as though the baby already shared Beca’s adoration for the hazelnut spread.

 

 

 

 

 

When Monday rolled around, Chloe called and scheduled an initial interview with both midwives for Wednesday, since her school ended earlier on Wednesday afternoons. Beca made arrangements to take the afternoon off, as well.  

So, when the time rolled around, she and Chloe uncertainly made their way into the office to meet with the first midwife, Kelly. After the hour-long appointment was over and they’d covered all of Chloe and Beca’s (numerous) questions, they thanked her for her time and told her they’d be in touch before they rushed out to make it to the second appointment in time.

When they sat down with Julia, they both immediately felt a click that had been absent during the first meeting. They met each other’s eyes and grinned.  Beca even gave Chloe a tiny nod.

Julia easily allayed all of their concerns – talking through and even showing Beca the safety features they prioritized, and emphasizing their location residing only a half-mile from their collaborating hospital. Her serene approach and effortless answers to Beca’s list of questions was immediately calming, and as the hour flew by Chloe became more and more confident that this was right. Chloe immediately fell in love with the birthing suite that Julia gave them a tour of, and Beca looked around in awe, eyes wide as they landed on a complex system of tubes and tanks tucked in one corner of the room.

“What in the world is _that_?” Beca questioned, pointing at it.

“That is actually what we use to administer Nitrous Oxide.” Julia replied. “Did you want to take a look at it?”

“Wait, Nitrous Oxide? Like… laughing gas?” Beca asked, baffled.

Julia laughed. “Yes, laughing gas. It’s a safe form of pain control that dissipates quickly and doesn’t have any effect on baby and doesn’t linger in mom’s system, so it’s great for labor. Of course, a lot of women say that being in water is an amazing form of pain relief too.” She continued, gesturing through the door to the huge birthing tub in the suite. “You’ll have a lot of options in labor, so you can go with whatever your body is telling you feels right. Not just about that,” Julia said, her gesture encompassing the tub and then the nitrous oxide tank, “But you also get to decide what position feels right to deliver in. We’ve found that being flat on your back as is required in hospital settings tends to make deliveries much harder and longer than the more natural positions most women choose to deliver in here.” She went on to explain. “We also have a birthing stool, see?” Julia pointed at the odd chair-like contraption in the other corner.

“Oh!” Chloe breathed out laugh. “Thanks, I was wondering what that was.” Julia smiled gently at Chloe’s chagrin.

“I know it’s a lot to take in, so don’t be afraid to ask me any question that you come up with. That’s what I’m here for. If you do choose to use us, of course.”

Chloe looked up at Beca once more to check, and at her decisive nod, Chloe turned back to the midwife. “Beca and I both really love your center, and I think we both feel a connection with you that we didn’t with the other midwife we interviewed, so… well, how do we go about setting up our prenatal appointments?” Chloe finished with an awkward laugh. Julia let out a broad smile, clearly happy to hear they had already made their decision.

“Oh, lovely! I have a feeling you two are going to be a lot of fun to work with.” She winked at them merrily. “Why don’t we head up to the calendar and get this all worked out, then?”

****  
  


 

As it turned out, Chloe and Beca were back in Julia’s office just short of two weeks later for Chloe’s first ‘official’ appointment at the practice. At 12 weeks, Chloe was finally exiting the first trimester – Beca and Chloe both were relieved that they didn’t have to be quite so uptight about accidentally spilling the news anymore.

Chloe and the chickpea, as Beca had taken to calling the baby, both received glowing reports of health. Now they were down to once-a-month visits for the time being, and they returned again as Chloe hit 16 weeks – her tiny baby bump finally starting to show - for another stress-free appointment.   

The next month was the big one. At 20 weeks, it was time for in-depth anatomy scan, to make sure the baby was developing as expected. While Julia had done an excellent job dispelling much of Beca’s anxiety over the past weeks, this appointment was instead with the center's collaborating OB, and only a direct intervention by god was going to stop Beca from worrying. 

As they sat in the waiting room, Beca fidgeted nervously, fiddling with her hair, her jacket, a magazine, and her shoe in succession before they were finally called back. The room was freezing, but Chloe stripped down and changed into the gown as instructed, and while they waited Beca shrugged off her jacket to wrap around Chloe’s shivering shoulders.

When the doctor finally entered and greeted them, Chloe handed the jacket back over with an air of reluctance, but laid back on the table as directed. After palpating her abdomen, the man finally switched on the ultrasound machine and pulled it closer to the table Chloe was stretched out on. Beca noted with relief that the ultrasound would be the stereotypical abdominal type now that Chloe was far enough along in the pregnancy. She didn’t want to have to be a witness to this guy shoving a remarkably phallic object into Chloe’s nether regions – partially because she honestly couldn’t even remember this guy’s _name_.

Nevertheless, they all chatted amicably as he ran through the usual measurements, checking the heart and brain and “all the important bits”, assuring the women as he went along that everything looked great. As he neared the end, measuring the baby’s femurs, he turned away from the screen to look at the couple.  Beca was seated by Chloe’s shoulder and gripping her hand tightly.

“I forgot to ask earlier. Do you two want to know the sex?”

“Oh! Er. Uh. Yeah? Yes. If that’s possible?” Beca stuttered out, looking at Chloe for confirmation, who nodded her agreement.

He moved the wand on Chloe’s stomach and grinned widely. “Oh, it’s definitely possible. She’s been eagerly flashing me for the last few minutes. See?”

“… She?” Chloe gasped. “Oh my god.   _She_? It’s a girl?” The doctor nodded his affirmation and the smile that took over Chloe’s face looked like it might genuinely split her cheeks. She turned to face Beca, and Beca realized that her hand had gone limp in Chloe’s, her face slack as she focused on the picture on the computer screen.

Beca couldn’t remember the doctor’s name, but for a second she had been very close to landing a celebratory kiss on the geezer. For the sake of having a complete memory she really should get his name again, but she’d ask Chloe later. The only sound she could force out at this moment was a strangled gasp, but thankfully it had the effect of unlocking her frozen throat. She turned to Chloe with tears already shining in her eyes and joyfully croaked at her.

“A _daughter_ , Chlo. That’s our little girl!” By the time the last word left her mouth, the tears were pouring unchecked down her face, and Chloe was in a matching state. Beca pressed a reverent kiss onto Chloe’s mouth, and then made an aborted attempt to pull away, instead giving her another one, and then another.

 The doctor waited patiently, clearly used to the emotional reactions of the countless expectant parents he’d given this news to in this room. When they gained control of themselves again, he resumed checking the last few measurements to finish up while Beca and Chloe chatted quietly with each other.

“A girl! I didn’t want to say either way, but honestly I’m so glad we’re having a girl, Becs. What would I even do with a boy?” Chloe laughed. An extra-excited glint shone in Chloe’s eyes as an idea came to her. “Oh! Let’s stop on the bookstore on the way home! I want to pick up some baby name books. I know we’ve been butting heads about it the last few weeks, but we can really start to figure out the name thing now that we can focus on girls’ names!”

Right. Names. Beca swallowed as she thought about how “well” finding a name they could both agree on was going to go. Well, shit.

“Uh. Can we maybe do that tomorrow instead? I want to go straight home and _celebrate_.” Beca waggled her eyebrows at Chloe. The doctor snickered and Chloe smacked Beca’s arm, laughing.

“Beca! Behave!” She said in mock outrage. She quickly glanced over to make sure the doctor wasn’t looking at them, and then shot Beca a wink and a slight nod while mouthing to her; “You’re on.”

 

Yeah, Beca was pretty sure she could confidently say that today she could out-happy even a Powerball winner.

 

 

 

**  
**


	2. A Mad Tea Party

After receiving the all-clear from the twenty week scan, Beca and Chloe finally decided to start making the necessary arrangements. Chloe sat down with her principal, who had obviously already known what was going on due to Chloe’s visible baby bump, but had kindly waited for her to come to him when she was ready. They talked over the arrangements for her maternity leave and the possibility of a sabbatical after the baby came, but Chloe hadn’t made a final decision on that yet.

Beca also talked with Greg, making it clear that she was going to finish wrapping up the albums she was working on but wouldn’t be picking up any new projects; these were scheduled to be completed just a couple of weeks before the baby was due, so it was perfect timing. Greg – already knowing Beca to be a force of nature when she had decided on something – capitulated easily, promising that her taking leave for a little while after the baby was born wouldn’t be an issue at all.

And Beca was - well, not _thrilled,_ but definitely thankful they’d already squared things away at work when, two weeks later, her publicist contacted her to let her know that a few tabloids had narrowed in on Chloe’s pregnancy and planned on running a few pieces featuring the information.

So, she followed up by doing something completely in line with the reputation she had already earned in the industry. Taking to her Instagram - sometimes having 1.3 million followers was useful instead of just scary - she was just polite enough to not get herself in trouble while still raking the tabloid media over the coals.

Deciding on a picture of Chloe charmingly showing off her adorable bump and gaining approval on the selection from Chloe, Beca posted it with a caption that many of her young fans termed “salty”.

“It has come to the attention of Chloe and I that, despite our repeated entreaties to maintain privacy in our day-to-day lives, several publications have taken it upon themselves to run speculative pieces focused on our life. To avoid giving them the satisfaction and to avoid having this special moment stolen, Chloe and I feel we have no choice but to beat them to the punch, despite our desire to hold off on any announcement. However, since we now have little choice, I would like to officially confirm that Chloe and I are very excitedly expecting our first child this summer!”

 

Chloe laughed at the baby emoji that Beca uncharacteristically added at the end of the caption, but Beca felt it helped soften the message enough to keep it on this side of appropriate. She was pissed, frankly, and she wanted them to know it – without facing censure. Elizabeth called a half hour after Beca’s post and, while Beca knew Chloe thought it was kind of hilarious that her mom was Beca’s main yardstick on her civility when handling these issues, Beca was relieved to know that someone she trusted implicitly endorsed her actions. Of course she had to listen to her publicist on these matters as well, and while she liked the woman well enough, she would never have the same regard for Kate that she held for her mother-in-law.

To be fair, it really was about time to acknowledge the rumors swirling around about the couple. Chloe’s bump was prominent now in the figure-hugging “tank top and yoga pants” getup Chloe favored around the house, and was reaching the point of unmistakable even in the loose, concealing clothing she wore out of the house.  It would have been obvious very soon anyway, but they had hoped that there would be little enough attention that they would be able to remain tight-lipped through the pregnancy.

But there had been far more buzz generated over Beca during the Grammy season than they had anticipated, and with the Billboard awards approaching, the spotlight focused on her was starting to intensify again. With the news out in the open, they made the decision to attend the award show together, and picked out a gorgeous figure-hugging long silver dress to show off not only the baby bump, but also the rest of Chloe’s assets.

With the way Beca jumped her wife after they got home from the fitting, she was pretty sure Chloe wasn’t harboring any fears that her changing body was less attractive to her.

In fact, Beca was thrilled by the whole thing.

The following week, she and Chloe were wrapped up in each other on the couch watching Jurassic Park, Beca mindlessly rubbing her hand over Chloe’s stomach as usual, when she was able to feel the baby move for the first time. She immediately hit kid-in-a-candy-store level of excitement and shrieked, which Chloe seemed to attribute for a second to the gore in the movie before realizing what had happened. Beca gripped Chloe’s bump in between both her hands and started praising it and giving it a pep talk, trying to convince the baby to give her a repeat performance. She didn’t even notice when Chloe not-so-covertly started recording the scene, but when she later saw the video, she disgustedly pronounced it “nauseatingly sappy”.  But she didn’t force Chloe to delete it.

Chloe finally hit twenty four weeks, something Beca celebrated greatly. Her anxieties had been significantly reduced since the check-in she’d had with her therapist, but knowing that they had hit the point where the baby had a chance to survive in case something _did_ happen to go wrong was a huge load off her mind. Julia raved about how awesome Chloe was doing health-wise before clearing them to travel to Las Vegas for the awards show. From LA to Vegas was normally only a four hour drive, but now that the baby was big enough to start pressing down on Chloe’s organs, the extra pee breaks (and snack breaks, which were _not_ all Chloe’s fault) stretch the drive to five. The rest of the trip went off without a hitch, except the night after the show when they got back to the hotel and Beca couldn’t decide whether having Chloe in or out of the dress was better. The manager had to come up and, red-faced and unable to meet Beca’s eyes, ask them to keep the noise level down. She couldn’t decide whether to be mortified or proud. (She decided on both.)

 

Although not technically mothers quite yet, a couple of weeks after returning home from the trip – two BMA statues in tow to join the gold gramophone on her shelf – Beca decided they were close enough to it to count. She thought about making breakfast in bed for Chloe, but realized she wanted to give her something she could actually _enjoy_ , so she got up early and fetched them food from Chloe’s favorite breakfast spot instead. When she crawled back into bed with the food on a tray, Chloe finally stirred. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and then quirked an eyebrow at what Beca had set up.

“Uh, Becs, did you _cook?_ ” She asked, a bit worried.

Beca smirked in response and shook her head. “Nope. Now that the baby actually has you sleeping in after me,” Chloe adorably wrinkled her nose at that and Beca couldn’t resist pausing to drop a kiss on it, “I was able to go out and get your favorite.”

Chloe gasped. “You went to Huckleberry?!”

Beca nodded. “And I know how, well - _finicky_ your taste buds have been lately, so I got you like four different things just in case.” She took the cover off the serving tray as she spoke and Chloe’s jaw dropped at the spread. Beca snickered at her shock that quickly morphed into salivating over the meal. She couldn’t help but smile as she took in the sight of her wife, the sunlight streaming in behind her illuminating her head and her bright hair so that she looked even more like a sun goddess than she normally did. “Happy first mother’s day, Chlo.”

Happy first mother’s day, Becs.” Chloe leaned over – with some difficulty, now that her belly was starting to get in the way – and kissed Beca, long and sweet. ‘Thank you.”

And then she promptly burst into tears. Which was… new.  

Up until now, Beca had all but decided that the common pregnancy stereotypes were nothing but myth. Chloe hadn’t spent three months with her head in the toilet, she didn’t send Beca out for weird food in the middle of the night, and she didn’t even have any weird temper issues or mood swings.

Well, not until now.

“Chloe! Babe? What’s wrong?!”

“Nothing!” Chloe sobbed brokenly. “I just love you a lot and I’m really glad you brought me Huckleberry for breakfast.”

Beca failed to hide her smile, but at least she held in her laugh.  She wasn’t sure, but Chloe _probably_ wouldn’t appreciate being laughed at and she didn’t want to test that right now.

“Okay, sweetheart. Why don’t we get some food into you?’ Beca soothed. She had to physically turn her back at the sight of Chloe shoveling pancakes into her mouth while still crying, but she gained control of herself after a minute and tucked herself into Chloe’s side to join her in the meal.

After a failed attempt to _really_ celebrate the holiday in bed, followed immediately by a necessary shower (“We are never eating anything with syrup in bed again, Chloe!”) they visited Chloe’s favorite farmer’s market. Chloe obviously fell in love with some hand-dyed baby clothes one of the vendors had, and while she was off buying some vegetables for the week, Beca stealthily purchased her favorites.

But that wasn’t even the highlight of the day. When they got home, Aubrey texted asking if they could jump on Skype, which they – of course – immediately agreed to. To their surprise, when the video call connected, it wasn’t just Aubrey they were chatting with, but their whole group.

“Uuuuh... Hey, guys!” Chloe took a second to catch up, but then jumped right back into her normal cheeriness. Beca was still stuck in neutral as she processed the surprise.

“I… didn’t know Skype could do this now?”

“It changed like, last year, Beca. Join us in this century, please.” Aubrey mocked.

“Oh. Well. Uh. Hey.” Beca said, awkwardly waving at everyone. As usual, they snickered at her bewilderment and Beca pouted at them for the teasing.

“Okay, okay.” Aubrey declared, as usual jumping right into taking charge. “We actually had a reason for this call, right girls?” She asked with a pointedly arched eyebrow.

“Right!” Amy jumped in. “We’re trying to figure out when we’re going to invade Swaziland.”

“Er, what?” Chloe asked, perplexed. “I don’t think I’m really in shape to be invading anything.” She gestured to her protruding stomach.

Aubrey sighed. “What Amy’s _trying_ to say is that we need to pin down the schedule for when we’re all going to be out there.”

Beca and Chloe pulled back and looked at each other – Chloe simply puzzled, while Beca was far more alarmed.

“Uh… Guys, we love you all, but no way can we have you all here when the baby comes.” Beca said firmly.

Aubrey recoiled, looking offended. “Oh _god_ no, you guys would murder us.” Everyone else nodded their agreement. “No, we’re talking about the baby shower! We know you don’t have any super close friends out there and we don’t want you to miss out.  And none of _us_ want to miss it either - and I’ve always planned on being the one to throw Chloe a baby shower, so, yeah…” Aubrey trailed off.

“Wait. You guys are all going to fly out here just to throw me a baby shower?” Chloe questioned. At their nods, she burst into violent sobs.

Beca pulled Chloe into her arms and burst into laughter when she saw the looks of shock and fear plastered across everyone’s faces.

“No big, guys. This is just a thing that happens now. You’re not upset, right babe?” Beca asked, directing her attention back down at Chloe.

“Noo-oo!” Chloe choked out. “I’m soo-oo happy!”

Once Beca had fetched tissues and helped Chloe pull herself back together and dry off, they all worked to finalize the details. In just a month and a half, all their loved ones would be descending on LA to celebrate their growing family. Beca was excited… but she was petrified. There was no way that the whole gang being together again wouldn’t descend into some kind of insanity and possible police intervention.

The baby shower wasn’t just the former Bellas; Chloe’s parents flew out also, and of course they invited some friends from both workplaces – but only the ones they suspected could handle the crazy that was sure to ensue.

The shower itself went off much more smoothly than Beca was anticipating. Not that it wasn’t ridiculous; on the logic that Beca and Chloe _both_ were expectant mothers, they all forced Beca to participate in the mother-to-be portions of the party. Which meant – oblivious to Beca’s protesting that “It’s just a breakfast burrito, dammit!” – they were both the feature in the “guess the tummy measurement” game. She had a lot more fun with the music-themed games that dominated the bulk of the party, for obvious reasons. When Aubrey announced the game that required everyone to compete to write down the most songs with the word “baby” in the title, cocky Beca emerged. She smirked as the timer started and starting scribbling on her paper, in the end blowing everyone else out of the water. When Amy started shouting about her job disqualifying her and trying to steal her “trophy” of a baby bottle full of candy, she tried to physically fight her off and ended up having to hide in the bathroom to scarf down her candy before Amy gave up. But, all the ridiculousness aside, nobody got arrested and they didn’t need to hire a contractor to do repairs after the party was over so it was a success all around.

Chloe even only cried when opening presents – everyone went way overboard, although Beca really thought that by now she should be used to expecting the unexpected out of their friends. She ended up glad they hadn’t bought much of – well, anything, to be honest – quite yet because it was now going to take them a few weeks to sort through everything and see what all was even _left_. Chloe’s parents bought them the ridiculously expensive crib that Chloe had fallen in love with and Beca had been trying to talk her out of as “wasteful”, so that was clearly a lost cause. Chloe’s work friends all went in on a pool to give them the bassinet they had been looking at, and between everyone else they got their car seat, stroller, slings, swing, and all the other big items squared away.

And then there were the… more interesting items that Beca had braced herself for. Stacie gave Chloe a “Kegel exerciser” that basically looked like a vibrator to Beca, but she was going to trust Stacie’s judgment since she made her living doctoring vaginas. Part of Aubrey’s present was a romper with a mop attached to it which... Beca wasn’t _entirely_ sure was a joke. Emily had thrown in a couple of pacifiers – one that said “Mute plug” on it, and the other in the shape of a buck-toothed mouth – with the justification that they were too funny to resist. Beca believed her, since Emily started laughing hard enough to fall out of her chair when Chloe pulled them out of the gift bag. Lily gave them a katana and throwing stars “for the baby”, which Chloe looked at wide-eyed and then carefully passed to Beca to immediately lock up somewhere safe. (At least until they could figure out where to get rid of them.) Jessica and Ashley gave them bundle of CDs that were “lullaby” versions of classic artists- Metallica, the Beatles, Bon Jovi, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana… which, actually –

“These are fucking cool.” Beca stared at the spread of CDs in front of her, then blinked up at the grinning pair. “I can’t wait to use these!”

And then there was Amy, who had of course in no way contributed to any of the actually _useful_ items in order to put all of her budget towards the things _she_ deemed “useful.” She bought them a “crib dribbler” that basically looked like one of those water bottles you hang in a rodent cage, and nonchalantly informed them that this way they wouldn’t have to worry about interrupting sleep to feed the baby in the middle of the night. She also included a sling-type contraption that hung on a door “just in case you need the tyke out of the way”, and a baby toupee “in case she comes out Bruce-Willis bald”.  When one of Chloe’s coworkers, seemingly horrified, asked her where she even _found_ that, Amy went into one of her five-minute fantastical spiels that made no sense to anybody else listening.

Surprisingly, Flo’s gift was the one that Beca found the most disturbing. She had knitted a hat for the baby made to look like a boob – nipple and all. The second she saw it she resolved to never, ever put it on her daughter’s head… but Chloe seemed to find it hilarious. She laughed herself to tears again while Beca started planning how to hide it sometime in the next few weeks to avoid subjecting her daughter to the trauma. She will thank her in a decade or two, she’s sure.

Everyone didn’t fly out just for a single day of celebrating, of course. Chloe’s parents stayed in the guest room, and Aubrey ended up deciding to crash on an air mattress in the half-assembled nursery while the rest of the Bellas had rented a house for a week. Beca mentally sent an apology to that owner when she found that out, her mind immediately going back to the numerous repairs that had been needed on the Bella’s house due to some of their antics – usually spurred on by Amy, of course. Surprisingly, the house made it through the vacation unscathed – although Amy got banned from Disneyland. (She said she was fine with that because at least they didn’t stick her in one of the gas chambers under the park, which – Beca preferred not to think about too long.)

Beca and Chloe had scheduled a maternity photo session for 34 weeks, as that was what the photographers had all recommended.

So the week after everyone flew home, Beca was shocked one morning when Chloe waddled out of the bedroom and -

“She finally flipped.” Chloe said frankly.

“Uh. I can… see that. She’s much lower now.  It’s like… hanging. Does that… How do you feel?”

“It’s much better to have her kicking me in the stomach rather than the cervix, so I’m liking it.”

“Also that whole thing where she’s not breech so you don’t have to worry about a c-section.” Beca pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s also nice.” Chloe agreed with a grin.

It was fortuitous that the photographer (someone she’d been referred to by one of the magazine photoshoot photographers that she’d worked with after the Grammys and really liked) pointed out that the much more obvious bump photographed a lot better, so Chloe was pleased. Beca hadn’t really _intended_ on participating in the photos, but Chloe had insisted and the photographer backed her up and so Beca did her best to keep a straight face through the more ridiculous poses.

They were finally, _finally_ doing everything to get ready for the baby – Chloe had wanted to wait until the baby shower to get everything, and considering what all they’d ended up with, Beca was glad they’d waited but she was more than a little antsy now to get everything ready for the baby to arrive. They had a month and a half left until she was due and nothing was done. The crib sat unassembled in the nursery (which Beca had at least painted last month), they hadn’t even picked out a glider to go in the nursery yet, and the rest of the gear they’d been given was still piled in the corner of the living room where they’d put it after the baby shower.  So they made a weekend of it – Beca cursing as she assembled the furniture and Chloe “helpfully” pointing out the correct instructions after the fact. On Sunday evening, Beca finally stood and brushed both her hands off on her jeans and then reached over with them to pat Chloe’s head and stomach simultaneously.

“Lookin’ good, girls.” Beca smirked. “We did a respectable job in here.”

“Mmhmm. Stop patting me like a dog.” Beca snickered, but removed her hands. “Thank you. I’m going to go ahead and throw all these adorably tiny little tiny outfits in the washer to get them all ready and organized in the dresser and stuff too. Can you run and pick up a pizza or something for dinner?”

“A pizza? Fuck, yes I can.” Beca said excitedly, dropping a peck on Chloe’s cheek before literally running out of the room.

“Don’t forget the salad too! Remember my heartburn!”

At 36 weeks, Chloe was almost full-term. The appointments with Julia were now moved up to every week so she could keep an eye on how things were going in the final stretch.  Chloe was finally _really_ feeling pregnant, and Beca could tell that Chloe – despite her irrepressible cheeriness – was feeling it more than she had been the rest of the pregnancy. She had to pee a million times a day – or at least it felt like  - because the baby had gotten big enough that her bladder just didn’t have any _room._ When they saw Julia, they explained how Chloe’s back had been killing her and Beca kept giving her massages that only helped for so long, and she gave them the suggestion of having her roll tennis balls over Chloe’s lower back and hips instead, which she found was a _huge_ relief. Apparently Chloe’s feeling “loose and swollen everywhere” was because her body was ramping up the production of a hormone to help “open things up”, which Beca _really_ didn’t want to think about for too long.

Full-term was 37 weeks. Which they couldn’t even begin to forget about since the exact day – practically the exact minute, although they probably didn’t know _that_ – Chloe reached it, suddenly their phones were buzzing off the hook. Beca could hardly get any work done with the flood of messages constantly inquiring whether “something is happening” or not. Chloe had started locking her phone in her desk and only checking it at lunch. Both of them resorted to keeping their phones almost constantly on “do not disturb” mode since both phones were set to always allow the other’s calls and messages to get through – although they’d had to field some panic the first evening after they’d done so.

Chloe – oh-so-blissfully – started her maternity leave the next week. With the size of the globe hanging down from her midsection, she was hardly able to get anything done, anyway. Beca tried to get her to stay home and rest, but after just a couple of days she got bored at home alone.  Beca had flashbacks of Chloe in college when she started whining about being “booooorrrred, Becs!” So Chloe came in to work with her for several days and usually ended up passing out on the couch for several hours which – was a fair compromise, actually, and Beca actually enjoyed having Chloe close by at work so she could keep an eye on her. Just in case.

But, the following week Chloe went into hardcore nesting mode. She stayed home and – with strict instructions from Beca to call her if _anything_ was happening – happily sorted through baby clothes, organized the nursery yet again, installed the car seat base into her car. She even spent a full day cooking meals to put in the freezer – between naps.

Even Beca could tell Chloe’s body was getting ready. Her Braxton Hicks contractions were more frequent and stronger than they had been several weeks ago, and her wife couldn’t even begin to fight the fatigue, sometimes taking even two or three naps a day. They were both palpably on edge, waiting for the ball to get rolling.

And they waited. And waited some more. They saw Julia – for hopefully the _last_ appointment - on Chloe’s due date, and the midwife couldn’t hide her smile as Chloe and Beca both whined about their child’s lack of punctuality. The sheer amount of people bugging them for updates actually caused Chloe to delete the Facebook app off her phone and resort to sitting on the couch and – _reading_ , like it was the 1800s or something. Well, and watching some TV, but daytime programming is crap - which Beca had to agree with.

It was four days after Chloe’s due date when Beca, rushing around trying to get ready for work in time, straightened herself up and looked closely at her wife when she came shuffling out of their bedroom over an hour after she usually arose for the day. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked “about to take a nap” tired, instead of the more expected “just got out of bed” tired.

“Chlo?” Beca carefully asked. “How are you doing?”

“I’m… fine. I didn’t sleep well and my back hurts, as usual, but there’s _still_ nothing going on.” Chloe replied with a grimace.

“No contractions or anything?” When Chloe shook her head in the negative, Beca sighed.

“Okay. Just make sure you let me know if anything changes, alright babe?”

Chloe head shot up to make eye contact with Beca, looking worried and scared. “I… do you _have_ to go into work today?” Chloe asked her timidly.

“I… uh…” Beca floundered. “No, I don’t. But – I thought you weren’t having contractions or anything?”

“I’m not. I just... it’s weird. I just feel _off_ , and I can’t put my finger on why, but the thought of you going to work today is really freaking me out.” Chloe explained, tension clear in her voice.

“Okay, honey, okay.” Beca sat next to her on the couch and soothingly brushed her hair back from her face. “Everything is all wrapped up with my projects already so I was just going to go try to take care of some loose ends before I go on leave. I can totally stay home instead, though.”

Chloe nodded wordlessly and leaned herself into Beca’s side in gratitude. When she saw Chloe trying to furtively wipe a few tears off her face, Beca wrapped herself around her and hugged her tightly, trying to offer some comfort – which was made harder by the fact that she didn’t know _what_ she was comforting.

After she finished breakfast, Chloe complained about her back again and Beca worked her over with the tennis balls before finishing off with a massage. She coerced Chloe out into a short walk around the neighborhood, figuring that the fresh air and movement would do her some good – and it did erase some of the pinched look off Chloe’s face.

When they got back to the house, Beca suggested that Chloe – still looking exhausted – might consider taking a nap, to which she readily agreed. Beca kissed her on the forehead before giving her the gentlest of pushes towards their bedroom.

“I’m going to stay out here and send off a few emails before getting some stuff done around here. You go relax.”

Beca would _like_ to say the next couple of hours just flew by, but instead it seemed to be moving at a crawl. Housework was awful drudgery on the best of days, and combined with Chloe’s weirdness today she was having real trouble concentrating on actually making any progress, instead prioritizing keeping one ear out for Chloe. Which she was thankful for as she finished her hurried vacuum of the nursery, just able to make out the sounds of Chloe calling for her as she shut off the machine.

“What’s wrong, Chlo?” Beca asked as she burst through the door. Then she processed that Chloe was _not_ in bed where Beca had been expecting to see her, and her freak out started building quickly.

Thankfully, Chloe shut it down. “I’m in the bathroom, Becs.” Chloe called out for her again.

“Oh, thank god.” Beca said as she leaned on the doorway into the bathroom. “What’s going on?”

“Uh. I _just_ peed like, two minutes ago, so I’m fairly certain that _that_ is not me peeing my pants.” Chloe said resolutely as she pointed at the large wet spot on her pants.

“Uh… you mean… well. Shit.” Beca finished weakly as her mind short-circuited.

“I was thinking more ‘finally’ than ‘shit’, but yeah, I guess that works, too.” Chloe said dryly.

The joke broke the tension building in Beca and she barked out a short laugh. “Yeah, okay, I am with you on that one. So… god. It’s finally happening.”

“Well, at least it _should_ be now. I haven’t actually had any contractions yet.” Chloe said reasonably.

Beca wrinkled her nose in thought. “We’ve been waiting for _so_ long and it seems like such a letdown to know that it’s happening now and still all we’re supposed to do is… wait.”

“Yeah, labor is such an anticlimax.” Chloe agreed, sticking her tongue out at her wife.

“You’re the worst. You know what I mean, you’re not even really in labor yet. We have to wait for the contractions to start, and then we have to wait for them to get close enough so we know you’re in active labor before we even leave for the birth center. We could be waiting all day!”

“ _No!_ No.” Chloe said indomitably, pointing at Beca. “Don’t even suggest that. Nuh uh.”

Beca held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. Fine. I take that back. But uh… now what?”

Chloe looked forlornly at the bathtub. “I was totally about to take a bath to help with my back, but now I don’t think I’m supposed to take one with my water broken?” She scrunched her face up trying to remember. “Maybe just a hot shower then? That’ll still help with my stupid back, and I can try to clean myself up so I look like a hot laboring woman instead of a hot mess.” Chloe teased.

“You always look hot, Chlo. Even when you’re a hot mess.” Beca shot right back.

“Ooooh. Good. Wanna take a shower with me?” Chloe responded.

“Um. Duh.”

 

In under a minute, both women were stripped down and enjoying the large shower together. Of course, nothing out of hand – Chloe was this close to having a baby, after all – but they did take the opportunity to be affectionately intimate for the last time as just a couple, sharing lingering kisses and caressing touches.

Of course, they were doubly glad for Beca’s shared presence in Chloe’s shower when the first contraction hit her about three minutes in.

“Fuck!” Chloe groaned suddenly, leaning over – as much as her belly allowed – and trying to lean against the wall in support. The slick of the moisture coating the tiles walls and floor and her drastically modified center of gravity threw her off and without Beca there to help hold her up, she would have hit the floor.

“Shit, Chloe!” Beca said, startled. Chloe didn’t respond, too busy trying to breathe her way through the contraction. Finally, after a long minute, she straightened up.

“Well, that answers that question.” She said weakly.

Beca helped wash her hair, supporting Chloe as she swayed through another contraction while her conditioner-slicked hair sat piled atop her head.

“That was quick, Chlo.” Beca said nervously. “Let’s get you out and dressed, okay.”

“The water feels really good, though.” Chloe panted.

Beca grimaced. “Okay, but I at least have to go get dressed and have the ability to time them but I don’t want you to get hurt and… I don’t know, can you like, sit down under the water or something?” She awkwardly proposed.

Chloe shrugged. “You know getting on or off anything is a battle these days, but I’ll give it a try?

Beca carefully helped her down to the warmed tile, where Chloe took to her hands and knees and moaned appreciatively as the water pounded down on her back.

Beca, meanwhile, bolted out of the shower, toweling herself dry before tossing her clothes back on and digging in the pockets for her phone. She cursed, not finding it, and then remembered she’d tossed it in a basket in the baby’s room when she’d received yet _another_ message requesting an update. She smiled tightly – they weren’t letting anyone know until after the baby was here so they could have some measure of peace while Chloe was laboring, anyway. They knew otherwise there was no way in hell their friends would leave them alone – Amy alone would be bugging them for an update every 5 minutes, let alone everyone else.

When she bolted back into the bathroom, she shouted over the noisy spray of the water. “Okay, I’ve got it. You alright?”

“Beeeccc!” Chloe was able to force out in a hiss, already in the throes of another contraction. Beca noted this immediately, pulling up the app on her phone to log the time before setting it aside.

“Okay. Chloe. Your contractions are already really close together, I think. I know you’re liking the water but it’s time for you to get out. We need to get dressed and get our stuff and I’m going to give Julia a call, okay?”

Chloe just nodded tightly, conceding to the logic of Beca’s words. She got up – clumsily, with Beca’s assistance – and waddled out into their bedroom to locate a fresh pair of yoga pants and her favorite tank top. When she opted to pull on a plain black bikini top under her tank top, Beca gave her a questioning look.

“For the birth tub. Just in case.” Chloe explained simply.

“Ah. Right. I… should I toss something in my bag?”

“Hmmm. Probably? Why not, better safe than sorry?”

As soon as Beca turned her back to rummage in her dresser for her swimming gear, Chloe let out a grunt, long and deep. Beca whirled back around to find Chloe leaned over the bed, bracing herself on it with her hands, and swaying her hips as another contraction gripped her.

“Shit!” Beca exclaimed, starting to panic. She tugged her phone out of her pocket and entered the new piece of data, panicking starting to overtake her for real when she looked at the input with wide eyes.

When the contraction ended, Beca gripped Chloe’s shoulders firmly. “Chlo, that was only three and a half minutes from the last one. We need to _go_.” Chloe just nodded weakly, and Beca shoved a pair of flip-flops at her. “Here. I’ll grab the bags and get them in the car. Make sure you have everything you need.”

“Wait!” Chloe cried. Beca whirled around, expecting something bad, but instead Chloe looked sheepish. “I don’t want scraggly hair hanging in my face the whole time. Can you braid it back for me?”

Beca’s jaw dropped. “Seriously? _That’s_ what you’re worried about right now?”

“Yes! It’ll drive me crazy and it’ll be even harder to do as things get more intense. Please, Becs?”

Beca sighed but folded easily, because – come on, her wife was about to have a freaking _baby_. Just as she finished the neat braid, another contraction hit. This time Chloe grabbed Beca with her arms wrapped around her neck, using her to support her body weight and followed the same swaying motions her body had already been naturally compelling her to do. When it ended, Beca rushed to the car, dialing for Julia as she went.

She ran back to the bedroom to help Chloe just as she picked up. Sliding an arm around Chloe for support, she greeted the midwife.

“Hey, Julia. It’s Beca. So, Chloe’s water broke, uh – like, twenty minutes ago?” Beca started, a little unsure. “But, she’s had like, six contractions already. They’re coming a little over three minutes apart right now. So, we’re headed in now.”

Julia agreed that that sounded like the right idea, and that she would meet them there. On the twenty minute car ride, Chloe had another six contractions, which was starting to _freak Beca out._ Having to deliver the baby in their car was pretty much the last thing she wanted to do, ever. She heaved a massive sigh of relief when they pulled into the birth center parking lot, causing Chloe to laugh weakly at her.

They walked into the center and immediately ran into Julia, who greeted them and ushered them back to birthing suite. Chloe turned around to ask her a question, and a contraction hit instead. She moaned, long and low, and made a blind grab for Beca who came to her rescue immediately, helping support her and work through the swaying that had been helping her cope so far.

“That was less than three minutes.” Beca reported tensely to Julia.

When the contraction ended, Chloe sat down on the bed in exhaustion and Julia squatted a down in front of her. “Okay, Chloe. I can check you now, if you want. Or we can just skip it and you can keep going. I don’t think there’s much question about you being in active labor.” Julia said with a smile.

“Can I – Can I just get in the tub?” Chloe gasped, still trying to catch her breath.

“I think so, yes. We don’t want to use it too early because the water can really slow down labor sometimes, but I don’t think we need to worry about that.” She answered, casting a critical eye over the laboring woman. “I’m going to go get it started filling, I’ll be right back.”

While Julia got the tub set up, Beca supported Chloe through another contraction. After getting the water started, she crossed back over to the pair and calmly showed Chloe a few favored positions using the inflatable birth ball in the room, which Chloe immediately took to with relief.

Three contractions later, the tub was finally full and at the right temperature, and Chloe immediately stripped down to her swim suit to climb in, settling in with a sigh of relief. After the first contraction in the pool – which Beca could objectively see Chloe handled better than the “dry” contractions – Chloe gestured to Beca, asking her to get in the pool with her. Beca changed quickly into her own suit in the bathroom, and then climbed in with Chloe – appreciating the warm water, but she was sure, not nearly as much as her wife was. She provided counter pressure on Chloe’s back as she had contractions, provided a constant litany of reassuring words, and helped support Chloe when she leaned back exhaustedly and settled between her legs, leaning against her front as the contraction loosened its grip.

And that’s how the next two hours went, the contractions getting closer and closer and more and more intense as the time flew by.  Chloe became incommunicable, intently focused inward, switching between being on all fours and leaning back against Beca as she coped and tried to work with her body.

Suddenly, after twenty-five minutes of Chloe not making any sound except for groans and shouts through contractions, Chloe broke the silence by speaking.

“I – Oh god, I need to push.” She gasped, wild eyes locking with Julia’s as her body took over and started pushing without her.

“That’s fine, Chloe. That’s just fine.” She said soothingly. “Listen to that urge, your body knows what it’s doing.”

“You don’t – need to check my dilation?” Chloe panted out.

“No, I can tell you’re ready to push already, Chloe. I’m not going to have you try to fight that urge just so I can quadruple check.”

“I don’t think I even can fight it.” Chloe gritted.

“Good!” Julia crooned. “Go with that. Work with it, not against it.”

Chloe nodded, and on the next contraction, Beca could see – and feel – Chloe actively bear down with everything she had.

This stage seemed both to take forever and to pass in the blink of an eye. Chloe let out strangled cries as the baby moved down the birth canal. Beca remembered the vivid descriptions of the intense fiery sensation of the baby crowning and winced in sympathy for what Chloe was about to go through.

Beca’s jaw fell open as Chloe let out the longest string of curse words she had ever heard her wife use. She lurched forward, moving away from the semi-reclined position against Beca she’d been favoring for the last half hour, and moving desperately to her knees, leaning her elbows against the edge of the pool.

“Go ahead and get behind her.” Julia quietly instructed Beca, who looked at her questioningly but did as instructed. “You want to help catch the baby, yes?” Julia asked, catching Beca’s puzzled look.

Beca swallowed, throat and mouth suddenly dry as a bone, but nodded.

Julia turned her attention to Chloe, and in the same peaceful, soothing voice she’d been using the whole time, told her, “Chloe, the baby is crowning. If you want to, you can reach down right now and feel the head.

“Really?” Beca questioned thickly, watching as Chloe reached down and gasped.

“She has so much hair!” Chloe managed to pant out. Beca couldn’t help the blinding smile that overtook her face – she wasn’t even born yet, but now she knew her daughter had a head full of hair. And dark hair, from what she could see.

Chloe grunted and growled, and Beca watched wide-eyed as the head slowly emerged, followed painstakingly by the shoulders before the baby abruptly slipped out into the water of the pool entirely. Before Julia could even direct her, Beca instinctively moved and scooped the baby out of the water into her arms, staring down at the little form in shock.

Beca had thought that Chloe– incredible, vivacious, _strong_ Chloe – had powerfully rocked her world. That is, until the tiny, damp, and shockingly loud form of her daughter was in her arms for the first time. In that moment, Beca felt her whole world shift. Beca loved Chloe, had loved Chloe for seven long years… but she loved Chloe because she had time to fall in love with Chloe; with how she was annoyingly chipper in the morning, how she was rarely overtly upset about anything but would curl up on the couch with a mug of earl grey to watch Planet Earth when she was feeling down.

Chloe had pulled Beca into her orbit and Beca, for the first time, had been secure in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to be hurtling off into the cold blackness of space by herself ever again. Chloe’s gravitational pull was inevitable, yes, but like most major forces it was slow and building, far from sudden.

But this? This was sudden, and powerful, and the new intensity was almost blinding - like Beca had been thrown through space until she was so close to the sun that her body had been melted down and disassembled so all of her parts could be rearranged into something new.

Beca lowered the baby to Chloe’s chest, both of them staring in awe, and they watched as the infant quieted her cries into slow yawns, her face relaxing and her steely blue eyes blinking at them slowly. Beca cried, and when Chloe laughed at her the tears kept falling, even when Beca laughed at herself and pressed a kiss of devout thanks against her wife’s lips she continued to sniffle.

“You did it, Chloe!” Beca grinned through her tears. “Look at her, she’s so perfect.”

“She is.” Chloe laughed. “Hello, sweet pea.” She crooned down at the baby, lightly stroking her head and then tracing her limbs with one finger. “Look at you!”

Julia bustled around them, but both women hardly paid any attention to what she was doing, too focused on the tiny person cradled in Chloe’s arms to care about anything else.

“Is she – do you think she’s still –“

“Oh, yes.” Chloe said decisively. “Even more, now that I’ve _seen_ her. I’m even more sure.”

Beca grinned – _beamed,_ even. Well, then. She leaned closer to the baby and slowly stroked her face with the tip of a finger before trailing down and prodding at the tiny fist, which immediately opened to grab the offered finger. Another tear fell off Beca’s face into the water of the birth pool. She leaned her face in right next to Chloe’s, staring down at the tiny face just a few inches below theirs, and she crooned down at her.

“Happy birthday, Alice.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My ask box is always open to screams - also at gohandinhand on tumblr!


	3. Alice's Evidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time, Beca’s weird sleeping habits were actually coming in handy.

It was hard to believe Alice was finally here.

After several minutes filled entirely with awe-filled staring, Beca cut the cord at Julia’s prompting - the look of revulsion on her face as she did so made Chloe laugh, and then cringe in pain. They took their time just soaking her in; her skin seemed too big for her body, wrinkly and loose. The water had washed her clean and they took advantage, gently trailing their touch from her perfect, tiny toes up to her fuzzy head. Her left ear was partially folded against her head, like she’d pressed herself into a weird position in the womb, and it had the slightest point Beca couldn’t help but trail her finger over.

Alice was busy taking them in, too. She stared up at them intently, her wide blue eyes roaming over their faces in that slightly cross-eyed manner all newborns seem to have.

Julia finally interjected, breaking the spell that had fallen over the new little family.

“Okay, Chloe. You still have the placenta to take care of, so it’s going to be time to climb out and let Beca have the baby for a little bit.”

Beca turned her head to the midwife as she spoke. “Alice.” She informed her with a grin.

“Alice, then.” Julia corrected herself with a smile. “Beca, you go ahead and climb out and change into something dry first.”

Beca did as instructed, zooming back to the side of the pool in under a minute.

Julia looked her over thoughtfully, then made a suggestion.

“Actually, Beca, if you’re okay with it…  Skin-to-skin is still way better for her, and your shirt is perfect to unbutton and just tuck her in there with you.”

Beca thought about it for a second, and then shrugged.

“Yeah, okay. Couch?” She asked, pointing to it. Julia nodded her assent, then carefully reached for Alice and wrapped her in a towel to dry her off. She checked her over briefly, then carried her over to where Beca plopped herself down on the couch.

Beca unbuttoned her flannel and then awkwardly transferred the floppy Alice from Julia’s arms. She tucked her in against her chest, re-buttoning the bottom half over the newborn and deciding that this was definitely now going to forever be her favorite flannel.

As Beca basked in the baby snuggles, Julia helped Chloe laboriously out of the tub and to the bed, where the placenta was promptly delivered. Julia checked Chloe over and observed with a pleased look that she hadn’t torn at all, no stitches necessary. When she finally pronounced Chloe “fit as a fiddle”, Beca chimed in from her spot.

“Well, that’s good timing, because I think someone’s getting impatient.” Beca said with a wry grin, looking down at Alice who was rooting around on her chest. “Those aren’t going to do you much good.” Beca told Alice pointedly, and Chloe snorted before her face faded into a look of concern as Alice let out a startlingly kitten-like cry. “Oh! Jeez! I’m sorry! Give me a sec and you can have the working ones.” Beca anxiously attempted to soothe the baby.

She hauled herself up from the couch inelegantly, keeping one hand on Alice as she rose, then crossed to the bed.

“One hungry baby, coming right up.” Beca joked. She stood uncomfortably in front of Chloe, supporting Alice’s weight against her chest with both hands cradled behind her back, as Chloe unbuttoned Beca’s shirt to remove the baby. She finished and immediately held her hands out for Alice, wiggling her fingers impatiently.

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses,” Beca muttered as she awkwardly tried to shift Alice in her arms and transfer her to Chloe safely. Chloe giggled at her fumbling, and Beca shot her a look of faux offense. “It’s not like I’ve had much practice,” Beca huffed, but Chloe detected the note of true hurt underlying her response.

“I know, I know, it was just – you were so focused that your tongue was sticking out a little bit and it was _so_ cute.” Chloe responded, looking contrite as she took Alice into her arms.

“ _No_ calling me ‘cute’, Chloe. Especially not with our daughter right there! That’s like, double damage, and she’s going to get offended.”

Chloe snorted and shifted Alice onto her lap, looking down at the baby. “You are very, _very_ adorable, Alice.” Chloe cooed down at her. She stroked one cheek with her finger, and Alice instinctively turned her head, her mouth searching for it.

Julia stepped in. “She’s definitely hungry – see her rooting for your finger? Feeding her when you see that kind of cue, instead of waiting until she cries, is going to make getting her latched on much easier. Are you ready to try now?” Chloe nodded once, looking a little nervous, but leaned forward cooperatively as Julia shoved a couple of pillows behind her back to prop her up at a comfortable angle.

Beca observed closely as Julia talked Chloe through the first feed, taking mental notes about a good latch for later, just in case. After letting Alice suckle contentedly for quite awhile, Julia took her from Chloe - Beca already felt a swell of possession about someone other than her or Chloe holding the baby and dryly told herself that was definitely going to be a problem – to do a more thorough check up on Alice. As Chloe lounged on the pillows and watched, Beca helped Julia load Alice into a piece of fabric that connected to a scale. Beca watched nervously as Julia carefully held it up for a few seconds to get a reading, and then exhaled in relief when Alice was set gently back on the end of the bed.

“Seven pounds even!” Julia announced, and Beca looked surprised.

“Really? She just seems… _so_ small. I guess I’m just not used to newborns.” She said, amused with herself.

Julia laughed. “She’s definitely not a _big_ baby, but not tiny by any means. Perfectly in the middle.” Julia finished in a sing-song voice as she poked Alice’s little nose playfully. She weighed Alice and did a basic medical exam on her before handing her back to Beca, who was still anxiously hovering.

Beca, already getting more adept at the baby hand-over, stood and rocked back in forth with Alice and crooned at her about nothing in particular, just enjoying in the reaction Alice had as she obviously recognized Beca’s voice.

“That’s my girl,” Beca said proudly as she swayed in place.

“Nuh uh. That’s my baby.” Chloe said, holding out her arms with an exaggerated pout. Beca laughed and looked back down at Alice, who was smacking her lips searchingly.

“That _is_ your baby,” Beca said with a smirk as she passed Alice over. “That is your hungry baby, and that job is all yours.” Chloe laughed, and then focused intently on making sure Alice properly latched on to the other side to finish her feed. As she nursed, Beca crawled into bed with them, settling in right next to Chloe – so close she was almost behind her, and Chloe shifted to lean against her affectionately. Beca stroked Alice’s head, unable to resist the temptation, but Alice didn’t even slow in her motions.

Alice nursed for almost half an hour, and Beca could tell that Chloe was starting to get drowsy. When Alice finally unlatched, Chloe passed her to Beca so she could finally pull a fresh shirt on, but when she was dressed she sheepishly held her arms out for the baby to be passed back.

Beca passed her over with an understanding smile – Alice had been _part of_ Chloe for the better part of the last year, so she couldn’t imagine it was easy to be separated from her now. Adjusting to sharing her with everyone else wasn’t going to be the easiest thing in the world; Beca was already feeling reluctant – to put it mildly – to share her with others, so she couldn’t imagine how Chloe felt at the separation.

“Becs, do you have your phone?” Chloe questioned, pulling Beca from her train of thought.  At her questioning nod, Chloe grinned and turned to Julia. “Can you take our first family picture?” Chloe asked bashfully.

Of course Julia agreed immediately, so Beca passed her phone over whilst Chloe rearranged Alice on her lap, turning her around so more than the back of her fuzzy head could be seen. They posed for a few snaps, but when Alice started grunting and wiggling uncomfortably in the new position, Beca couldn’t help but lean down and place a kiss on the wrinkled little nose. When she heard the clicking sound of her phone taking a picture, she looked up from the baby, startled to find both Julia and Chloe smiling down at her. She blushed, shifting uncomfortably at the uncharacteristic display.

“Oh yeah. We’re using that one for something.” Chloe grinned at her.

“Uuuggh.” Beca half-heartedly groaned out – she couldn’t even be bothered to put much of an effort into her resistance, too distracted by how freaking _adorable_ her baby was. She stole her from Chloe’s lap, sticking a tongue out at her wife’s exaggerated pout, and cradled Alice in her arms. When she glanced back up at Julia, grinning proudly, she heard another click.

“Okay, okay, hand the phone back over.” Beca said with a scowl. Chloe chuckled, then winced a little. She caught Beca’s look of concern, and cut her off before she even opened her mouth.

“I’m fine.” Chloe reassured. “Just, you know, a little sore since I pushed _that,”_ she nodded at Alice, “out of me, what… an hour ago? Actually, wait, what time was she even born?”

“I… don’t know.” Beca answered slowly. “I was kind of distracted?”

They both turned to look at Julia in unison and she chuckled at the pair. “3:37pm.”

Chloe’s jaw dropped. “Wait… that means… how long was I in labor?”

“Uuuummm…” Beca mumbled as she thought. “Like, a little over two and a half hours from when your water broke, I think?” She looked to Julia for confirmation, who shrugged and nodded.

“Sounds about right. You went really, really fast Chloe - especially for a first time mom. That’s something you’ll have to take in consideration for next time.”

“Oh, _no._ ” Chloe stated firmly. “I am not even going to think about a ‘next time’ right now. It sure as hell felt like _much_ longer than two and a half hours.” Chloe said with a grimace, and Beca pressed her lips together to avoid laughing – she didn’t want to laugh at Chloe’s pain, but the uncharacteristic disgruntlement was… interesting to behold.

Chloe could not pull it off _at all_.

They relaxed at the birth center for another hour, for Julia to periodically check Chloe and Alice to make sure they were progressing as expected, and no complications were cropping up. Finally, Julia said the magic words.

“Everything looks perfect. You guys head home.”

Beca nervously strapped Alice into her car seat as Chloe hovered. As soon as she stepped back, Chloe swooped in to anxiously double-check her work… which didn’t stop both of them from re-checking yet again as they snapped the seat into the car.

Julia laughed uproariously at how quickly they had gone from zero to ten on the “anxious new parents” scale.

“Chloe, Beca, it’s _fine._ She’s healthy and ready to go; you have it installed properly, her straps are tight, you didn’t stick anything extra in there with her – you’re all set for a twenty minute drive home. I promise.”

Both women looked sheepishly back at her, but nodded resolutely. Their family was going _home_.

After parking in their garage, Beca pulled Alice’s bucket seat and her bag from the back of the car while Chloe gingerly hauled herself out of the car, thankful for the donut shaped pillow Julia had sent with her.

They walked in the door and made their way to the living room, where Beca gently lowered Alice’s car seat to the ground. She and Chloe turned to each other, flummoxed.

“So uh… what do we do now?” Beca asked.

Chloe shrugged, looking at the sleeping baby, and then glancing at the clock. “Uh. Dinner, I guess? We can pop in one of those frozen lasagnas or something that I made.”

Beca agreed easily, giving Chloe a kiss before directing her to take herself (and her donut pillow) to relax on the couch. She started the oven preheating, pulled the lasagna out of the freezer, and started pulling ingredients to throw together a salad (the extent of her “cooking” abilities) when she heard Alice start squalling. She looked out into the living room, where Chloe was trying to heave herself to her feet.

“Nope! Stay. I’ll bring her to you.” Beca called. “I know Julia said you’re in good shape but uh, you’re ‘in good shape’ for having given _birth_ just a few hours ago, so take it easy,” she reminded her wife as she unstrapped the now angry baby from her car seat.

Chloe didn’t even bother to reply, just smiling widely at the baby Beca handed over to her before going back to pop the lasagna into the waiting oven and finish the salad prep. When she reentered the room a few minutes later, she felt an _actual_ burst of joy and contentment, which – was freaky, actually, and made her grip at her chest. When she started thinking of the Grinch and the “heart grew three sizes that day,” Beca started giggling to herself, causing Chloe to finally look up from where she was staring at Alice’s face, entranced.

“You need anything while we wait for dinner, babe?” Beca asked her softly.

“Hmmm. Water, maybe? With ice, please. And could you pull the nursing pillow out of Alice’s room too? I have a feeling I’m going to need it in a minute.” Chloe directed the last part at her daughter in amusement, watching her trying to stuff as much of her hand as she could into her mouth as she searched for something to suck on.

Beca returned with both requests promptly, eagerly taking Alice from Chloe’s hands for a few moments while she got everything situated to feed her, and only pouting a bit when she handed her back.

Chloe laughed at her exaggerated disgruntlement. “You know, I did offer you the opportunity to induce lactation so you could share –“

“Oh, no. No. I enjoy the very limited number of bodily fluids my body is currently capable of producing, thanks. That’s all yours.”

Alice interrupted the teasing by letting out a piercing cry of impatience, and Beca frowned at her thoughtfully.

“She has cried every single time I’ve talked about my,” Beca motioned at her chest, “being out of order.”

“And we should count ourselves lucky that that’s been the only reason thus far.” Chloe countered playfully, sticking a tongue out as she focused on getting Alice latched on correctly.

“That’s our girl. Already smart enough to know how awesome boobs are.” Beca joked, backing away with her hands held up (although not enough to hide her wide grin) when Chloe shot her a look. “Whoa, dude. You’ve been a mom for not even four hours and you already have that ‘Mom look’ thing _down_. What the hell?”

Beca turned on the TV and distractedly scrolled through the stations for a minute before sighing and passing the remote to Chloe, as usual – completely lacking the interest or patience to choose a program, let alone sit through a whole one. When the oven beeped, Beca leapt up to grab it and pull it out of the oven to cool before crossing back to the living room to help get everyone situated for dinner. With perfect timing, Alice sleepily unlatched, milk pooling on her face and chin and looking undeniably –

“She looks drunk,” Beca stated. Chloe just furrowed her brow in response, distracted by pulling her shirt back down in preparation for eating her own dinner. “You know, ‘milk drunk.’ That’s definitely a phrase I’ve heard. That’s a thing. I swear. That’s the good stuff. What is the term – right? ‘Liquid gold’? Isn’t that what they called it at that one breastfeeding meeting we went to with all those weird people?” Beca finally paused for a moment in her rambling, thinking. “I think I’m still going to stick with the hard stuff, though.” She finished finally, and Chloe shot her another look at her conclusion. “Oooh, hold on!” Beca fumbled to pull her phone out of her back pocket as quickly as possible. “Yes, more ‘Mom Look’, Chlo. Perfect.” Beca teased as she snapped a picture.

Chloe finally broke, her severe façade fading into laughter at Beca’s antics.

“Actually, that’s a pretty adorable picture.” Beca mused. “We should probably let everyone know soon, and I’m voting for this picture.” She continued, although her reluctance about sharing Alice with everyone else, even in this tiny way, was clear.

“Mmmm, but the ones with all of us at the center were really cute too.  And I wanted you in it, also!” Chloe protested.

Beca shrugged.  “Okay. Let’s get food in us first, before we deal with that, because _I’m_ starving and I didn’t produce a tiny human being a few hours ago, so…”

“Yeah. Good point. Here, take the tiny human.” Chloe laughed, offering the now-snoozing Alice up to Beca. Beca took her gladly, enjoying the slight weight as she adjusted her in her arms. She shifted Alice to one arm, reaching out to help Chloe out with the other. When Beca went to turn away, intent on getting to dinner, Chloe didn’t let go of her arm, forcing her to pause.

“Mmmm.” Chloe hummed contentedly, leaning carefully into Beca so that she cradled both her and Alice. “This is nice.” Chloe said into Beca’s neck.

“I kind of can’t believe we were allowed to bring a baby home. Just like that. No oversight.” Beca said, incredulous.

“I have a confession.” Chloe whispered into Beca’s ear, disregarding her rambling as usual. Beca swallowed hard at Chloe’s tone. “You look really, _really_ hot with a baby.”

The quiet spell held for a couple of seconds before both burst into muffled giggles, trying not to disturb Alice’s slumber. Finally, Chloe let Beca go and they immediately made their way to the kitchen to devour a truly obscene amount of food.

Or, attempt to.

“Beca Mitchell. Did you just… drop _lasagna_ on our _brand-new_ baby’s head?”

“It wasn’t hot, and she didn’t even wake up at all, look.” Beca answered guiltily. She pointedly ignored the hands that Chloe reached out. “Nuh uh. It’s my turn now. You already had a turn.”

“But I’m also _way_ less clumsy than you, and I don’t want some horrible lasagna-related incident to befall our daughter an _hour_ after we bring her home.”

Beca frowned and poked her fork at her plate grumpily. “Fine. I’ll just eat more salad, then.”

“I had a feeling that would work.” Chloe said smugly. “Only took a baby to finally get you to eat a little healthier.”

“Ugh, no, don’t tell anyone _that_. That’s going to make it sound like some sappy bullshit, where the overweight dude goes ‘I want to be able to see my daughter get married!’ and starts exercising and eating healthy. Gross.”

“Okay. I’ll just tell them you almost broke Alice with _lasagna_ when she was four hours old.”

Beca stuck her tongue out at Chloe, then retracted it when a thoughtful expression overtook her face. “Actually, that reminds me… we need to, you know, actually tell everyone. Soon. Or they’ll probably never forgive us.” Chloe grimaced, but nodded.

“Ugh, yeah. You’re probably right. That’s your job, though.”

“Relegated to dad duty again?” Beca teased her wife, already pulling her phone out of her back pocket and laying it on the table.

“You know it, bro.” Chloe retorted while flashing an exaggerated and badly executed attempt at a… gang sign?

“Don’t do that. No.” Beca said resolutely, pointing her free hand at Chloe before carefully shifting Alice to her other arm. She scooped her phone back up in her dominant hand and immediately opened up her messages.

“Uh, group message or individual? I’m thinking group otherwise I’m not even going to be able to field the reactions.”

“Oh, for sure.” Chloe nodded. “Or, well, send it to all the girls. Maybe parents separately? Because…”

Beca cocked her head to the side as she pondered the potential reactions, and her eyes widened before she nodded shakily. “Yeah. That’s… yeah.”

Beca started crafting the message to the Bellas first, giggling to herself as she selected the picture she had just taken of Alice and Chloe for the announcement. She started typing, and then stopped abruptly, brow furrowed.

“Um… Middle name?”

“Oh crap. We never finalized that, did we?”

Beca shook her head. “We could still use Elizabeth…”

“No, Becs. It’s weird enough my mom gave me her name as my middle name, I’m not giving my daughter the _same_ one. It worked for Lorelei but that’s not my thing,” Chloe teased, and Beca sighed as she relented.

“Okay. Fine. What was the rest of the list?”

They started going over it, until Chloe ended – with a decidedly hopeful lilt – with a favored name that Beca had shot down several months ago.

Beca pursed her lips, staring down at Alice as she thought, until her shoulders finally sank and she nodded. “Okay. Fine. But _just_ because she didn’t come out a redhead. And also probably partially because you’re playing on the momentary, “you just had my baby” emotions. But mostly the redhead thing.”

“Noted,” Chloe teased, but Beca could read the excitement and appreciation in her eyes. “Why don’t I call mom and dad while you do that? Oh wait, text your dad first,” Chloe added as an afterthought.

Three minutes later, Beca Mitchell contributed a message to the Bella’s group chat for the first time in two weeks.

“Alice Clementine, 3:37pm, 7lbs and 20.5.  Chloe already figured out her mom glare.”

When her phone started ringing with multiple calls seconds later, she gleefully shut it off just as Elizabeth Beale answered her own call.

“Hey mama! Are you at home?”

“Chloe? Hey sweetie! Your dad and I are just watching a movie, actually. Anything happening yet?”

Chloe smirked as she hit the button to connect with a video call. “I don’t know, mom. You tell me.” She teased as the video feed connected, pointing the camera at Beca and Alice.

Elizabeth let out a gasp, and from where she sat Beca could hear her mother-in-law start excitedly smacking her husband.

“Oh my god!” Elizabeth shrieked. “Paul, oh my god, look! We have a grandbaby!”

“Alice.” Beca proudly informed. She was pretty sure she was never going to get sick of making that introduction.

“Alice Clementine,” Chloe said smugly, and Beca sighed.

“Begrudgingly, yes. Just to recognize the ginger destiny that she narrowly avoided.”

Elizabeth laughed, and she and Beca immediately fell into their normal rhythm.

“What, you got something against redheads, Beca?” Elizabeth teased, fingering her own bright red locks.

Beca flashed a look of innocently wide eyes. “What, me? Noooo. Otherwise Chloe and I definitely would have broken up that time that she tried to get me to swear off pizza for good.”

“That was _ten years ago,_ Beca!” Chloe shouted indignantly.

The loud noise was finally enough to rouse Alice, and she jerked her limbs, in that uncoordinated motion unique to newborns, and let out the tiniest, cutest mewl. Everyone’s attention was immediately diverted back to the tiny squirming lump in Beca’s arms.

The coos of delight turned quickly into looks of horror when Alice’s bottom half started emitting some disgustingly loud noises.

Beca opened her mouth, but Chloe beat her to the punch.

“Dad duty.” She said archly, pointing at Beca, and Beca just nodded glumly.

“Ooookay. Say goodbye to grandma and grandpa!” Beca said in a tone Elizabeth had genuinely not thought her daughter-in-law capable of producing. She waved one of Alice’s tiny hands at the phone before retreating down to the nursery to do – she bragged to herself to make the task slightly more palatable – Alice’s first official diaper change at home.

(It didn’t really help. Newborn poop was just as awful as she’d been promised.)

After Alice was cleaned up and fed – “She emptied herself out and now she needs a refill” Beca quipped as she handed her over to Chloe – Beca finally turned back on her phone. A whopping forty-two message notifications greeted her, and she groaned.

“You up for one more?” She questioned Chloe, who was on the couch attempting to burp Alice. At Chloe’s nod, Beca sent another message – “Group Skype, 5 minutes” – and then ran to grab her laptop from her home office.

She set it up on the living room coffee table and then settled onto the couch with Chloe and Alice. One after another, the Bellas all called in, until Beca’s ears were literally starting to ring with the cacophony of squeals being produced.

Once the obligatory cooing was out of the way, Aubrey was the one, of course, who got right down to business.

“Okay, so you guys refused to tell anyone before she was born – now you have to tell us. Why _Alice_? That’s not exactly where I saw your opinions merging.” Aubrey confessed.

Beca barked out a laugh, and Chloe shot her a warning glare. “Well Beca actually came up with it – no, really,” Chloe said, in response to the disbelieving stares repeating across the screen at her. “And I went with it because, you know, I _love_ Alice in Wonderland. And the Twilight connection, which BECA STILL REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE!” Chloe continued loudly over Beca’s grumble of disagreement. “Okay, tell them why you proposed it, Becs.” Chloe said with one eyebrow arched.

Beca grinned. “Alice Cooper.”

“… Well, that makes a lot more sense then.” Aubrey responded after the laughter finally trailed off.

They chatted for just a few minutes longer – Chloe was starting to yawn and lean into Beca more and more for support – to work out details about when visiting would be taking place, before saying goodnight so an exhausted Chloe could get to sleep.

They quickly discovered that Alice’s awakening almost immediately upon arriving home from the birth center was the first sign of what followed: Alice simply would not sleep apart from one of her mothers. The mound of baby books that Aubrey had picked out after extensive research and sent to Chloe warned against “catering” to the habit, but in typical fashion, Beca didn’t give a flying fuck. If some expert thought she was “spoiling” her two-day-old daughter by rarely letting her be put down, so be it.

Chloe fretted at first, warning Beca that Alice was “going to develop about 8000 sleep associations if we keep doing this!” At one point, Beca was worrying that Chloe was starting to approach a Worlds-level freak out about “doing it perfectly.” But truth be told, she was more interested in baby snuggles than trying to force some textbook-perfect sleep routine that their daughter clearly had no interest in, and she chilled out soon after. Chloe was a natural cuddler, and her daughter had clearly taken after her – something she couldn’t keep up any interest in being bothered about.

It was interesting, Beca and Chloe both being home together all day for an extended period. Of course, they had a lot to figure out, what with a newborn now being in charge of their schedule. After they embraced the necessity of baby-in-arms at all times, Beca and Chloe spent their days getting increasingly more competitive in their battle to see who could take Alice and plant themselves on the couch first. The winner got to lounge with a sleeping baby on their chest for the next two to three hours – although Chloe had the trump card of being Alice’s food source that Beca frequently pouted about.

At night, they had given up on trying to put Alice in her crib entirely. Their first night home had been filled with hours of crying (on Beca and Chloe’s part) and screaming (on Alice’s part) while they futilely tried to get Alice to rest in her crib. Eventually, Beca gave up on trying to lay her down and ended up falling asleep on the floor of the nursery with Alice laying on top of her. The next night, they brought Alice straight into bed with them and she passed out for a full three straight hours, nestled in between Beca and Chloe’s warmth. Despite Chloe fretting at first, both she and Beca were much more at ease with Alice in bed with them where they could snuggle and check on her throughout the night without having to fully wake up.

For the first time, Beca’s weird sleeping habits were actually coming in handy _._ Chloe only had to partially wake up and roll to her side to latch Alice on before dozing off while the infant nursed. After she was fed, Beca would gladly take Alice for the night wakings, appreciative for the quiet time with the full and drowsy infant that she didn’t have to compete for while Chloe slept. More than once, Beca found herself in the living room or even her home studio at 4am, unable to get back to sleep, with a baby on her chest and a laptop in her lap, working on a track while Alice snoozed away. She had never been more thankful that she’d taken the extended leave from work - except for her partial awakenings to feed Alice, Chloe was able to sleep most of the night and thus kept naturally waking up at 6am as she always had. Beca usually hadn’t had much sleep by that point, so Chloe woke up to baby duty and enjoyed a lazy morning with Alice all to herself until Beca stumbled out of bed sometime in the late morning.

Chloe’s parents, their first visitors, flew in when Alice was a week old. They took Alice out of the house for the first time since bringing her home to go pick them up at LAX. When they parked, Beca opened the back door and then stopped, perplexed. Alice was already stirring – the vibrations of the car had soothed her to sleep, the only place she would easily sleep besides in their arms, but as soon as it turned off she was up again. There was no way she was going to allow them to tote her around in the seat like they had seen many other parents doing. Chloe, smirking, presented her with a length of black fabric.

“Wrap,” she said simply in response to Beca’s questioning look. Beca struggled with it for a minute, glad when Chloe stepped in and easily helped Beca wind it properly around herself. Chloe had already used it multiple times around the house, thankful for the hands-free baby snuggles it provided, but Beca hadn’t been brave enough to try it yet. But when Alice was tucked into the fabric, snuggled happily against her chest, she had to admit that she was pretty into the whole thing. She looked down at Alice, then up at Chloe with a wide, disbelieving grin, and Chloe snorted out a laugh at the excitement Beca was clearly broadcasting.

When they entered the airport and the paparazzi who loitered around the airport spotted them Beca was even more appreciative of the carrier, happy to note that Alice was completely shielded from the cameras by the fabric covering her.  The next day at her direction, Beca’s publicist issued a statement that baby Mitchell had arrived safely and they simply wished for their privacy to be respected at this time. Despite that, when they went to pick up Aubrey and then several of the other Bellas for their visits in the following couple of weeks, the paparazzi swarm was even more aggressive. Beca resentfully took a break from her maternity leave for an appearance on the Ellen show, using the opportunity to talk about how she and Chloe had decided that Alice would not be a public figure and it was imperative that her privacy be maintained, which meant they wouldn’t be releasing any pictures of the baby and requested that the media not publish any in contradiction of their request.

Despite that, they were aware that many of the more unscrupulous members of an already unscrupulous profession were not only willing to disregard their desire, but had an increased motivation to secure a picture that would be even more in demand because no pictures of Alice had yet been released. Chloe crowed in delight the day she walked in the room to find Beca – with Alice on her chest as usual – scrolling through a familiar website full of different baby carriers.

Beca pointed at the one she had carted, insisting that, “It’s black and red, Chlo. Yes, I know it’s got stars, but it’s _black and red_. That’s still totally badass.”

Chloe, of course, abandoned teasing Beca for her wrap choice in favor of berating her for her word choice. Beca’s language had become a running joke between the two, and Chloe couldn’t resist chiding Beca for it, despite recognizing the futility. Of course, both women were singing to Alice _constantly_ , which Beca knew Chloe adored, and even pretended not to know that Chloe had more than a handful of videos on her phone that she had covertly recorded of Beca singing to Alice.

Beca had her own folder of Chloe singing to the baby, after all.

The point of contention was that, while Chloe favored softer alternative and Indie music, along with traditional lullabies, Beca went with her favorite music. Which, of course, included a selection of not-exactly-kid-friendly rap songs. Beca was starting to lose track of the amount of times she’d heard, “Can you at _least_ edit out the swears if you’re going to sing that?” Honestly, she found Chloe’s reprimands hilarious, and justified it with the fact that Alice surprisingly seemed to find the rhythm of the rap music more soothing that the lilting music that Chloe preferred.

That was, of course, also the excuse Chloe used when Beca awoke one night at 2am to find her rapping “No Diggity” to Alice as she tried to put her back to sleep. Beca just grinned and took over Alice duty so Chloe could go back to sleep.

Their visitors had, thankfully, opted to give them their space and stay at a hotel while they were in town, so the nights and early mornings were theirs to do with as they pleased. But during the day, it was Bella business as usual. The morning the group arrived at the house - announcing their arrival by Elizabeth laughing uproariously, probably at something dumb Amy had done or said as usual - and walked in to find Beca and Chloe having a riff-off for Alice’s entertainment, everybody else immediately jumped in. Elizabeth eventually had to cut them off so they could do lunch, and they forced her to deliberate over the winner. Although Stacie was her first choice, she disqualified her on the basis of “being way too sexual for singing to a two-week-old”, and Cynthia Rose crowed about her victory for the rest of the trip while ignoring Stacie’s demands for a rematch.

Besides that chaos - which Beca considered _more_ than tame, considering past incidents - everything was pretty laid back. There was, after all, a seven-pound human in their midst for the first time, and Beca and Chloe weren’t the only ones that had to adjust to it. Everyone mostly lazed around the house (no getting kicked out of amusement parks on this trip), and Beca was glad they’d opted for the house with a lot of outdoor space. It was fortuitous that they’d ended up with a summer baby, because the pool kept the Bellas nicely distracted - and when it didn’t, the obstacle course and then wrestling competition they set up on the lawn did. Despite her initial reluctance at sharing Alice with _anyone_ , Beca had to admit that _just every so often_ it was nice for someone else to have baby-holding duty; like the moments when she had to help a still-recovering Chloe in the bathroom - not exactly what she’d pictured at the “in sickness and in health” part of their vows, but there they were.

She’d gotten _Alice,_ out of the deal, so she wasn’t about to complain. Even when the others were teasing her about how far _gone_ Beca was over the infant, she just grinned at them and didn’t even try to refute it.

 

Chloe totally had her number, too. She didn’t tell Beca when she found the folder full of mixes simply titled “Alice” badly hidden on her laptop. They were, no doubt, the _sappiest_ things Beca had ever made - no doubt produced during those late nights mixing with Alice wrapped to her chest while Chloe caught up on sleep.

She did, however, screenshot it and show a few selections to Aubrey, whose astounded reaction tickled Chloe to no end. When she finally pulled her thoughts together enough to respond, the best Aubrey could come up with was a stumbling, “You – you broke Beca Mitchell. With a _baby_.”

Chloe had no choice but to agree with that assessment. The selection of photos she had of Beca passed out with Alice on her chest, and the videos of Beca being adorable enough with Alice to make Chloe’s ovaries clench spoke for themselves.

Chloe had opted to take the school year off to stay home with Alice, but Beca’s return to work set up for just after the two-month mark was drawing nearer and nearer. And when Alice hit six weeks, Chloe started getting as freaked out as Beca about her looming return to work.

Alice went from being a generally content and happy baby – as long as she was being held – to being completely miserable. She seemed to spend most of her time either nursing or screaming, and even getting her to sleep in their arms was a challenge. She was up every 45 minutes through the night, and Chloe took the turns when she needed to be fed, while Beca took her when she seemingly just needed to scream.

When they were at the birth center for Chloe’s last six-week postpartum appointment, they expressed their worry to Julia, who hastily reassured them.

“Unfortunately, six weeks is kind of awful for universally every baby, ever. You have a sleep regression coinciding with the “peak of fussiness” as she’s becoming more aware of the world. It will suck for a little while, but just a short time. You guys are handling it perfectly.”

Despite Chloe being cleared for “other activities” at the appointment, she and Beca were too busy juggling Alice’s crabby moods to even consider getting busy.

 _Finally_ , two weeks later – and just short of Beca’s return to work – Alice’s previously content temperament reappeared, soothing both Beca and Chloe’s worries about her shouldering the burden of childcare alone while Beca was at the studio. It had been a gradual shift, but after two months, they were finally getting into the rhythm that would be their new normal now that a baby was involved. They resumed their weekend trips to the farmer’s market, now with Alice strapped to one of their chests, and got into a natural routine with the daily tasks necessary around the house. When Alice spent forty minutes deeply asleep in the middle of their bed by herself for the first time, Beca and Chloe rung in the occasion by christening their couch for the first time in several months.

 

The day before Beca returned to work, she fretfully refused to put Alice down all evening. The only separation she’d had from Alice since she was born was that brief appearance on Ellen. She was panicking – although she could recognize how dumb it was even as she let herself spiral – that Alice would forget her while she was gone and wouldn’t want anything to do with her when she got home.

And Alice, in the easy way that babies have, soothed her worries in the space of a moment. Beca sat perched on the couch with her legs stretched in front of her, Alice reclined on them and facing her. When Beca started lightly tickling and making faces at Alice while crooning nonsensical baby talk at her at usual, Alice surprised her by letting out her first wide, _purposeful_ grin at Beca’s antics. She sat stunned for a moment, before her shout for Chloe brought her wife sprinting into the room.

“I – look!” Beca gasped as Alice let out another crooked smile at her mother. Chloe let out a twin gasp, and immediately whipped out her phone and started snapping pictures of the new development to share with their family. (Chloe’s Facebook page had definitely filled up with baby pictures like everyone liked to complain about, but uncharacteristically Beca didn’t care at all. Her baby was fucking _cute_.)

As Beca stared down at Alice’s blatantly displayed adoration of her, her anxious heartbeat slowed to normal and her breaths evened out. Chloe and Alice would be okay while she was gone, and would obviously be excited to see her when she got home, and wouldn’t hold her lack of functional boobs against her forever. Eventually she would totally be the cool parent, and...

Somehow, she knew everything was going to be just fine. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I'm sorry for the delay on this last chapter but here it is, finally!
> 
> This is the end of the list of ideas and prompts I had for this series, so nothing else is in the works right now. When/if inspiration strikes there will be more, so it's not over yet even if there is a big gap in posting! I'm more than willing to take prompts too, so if there's something you want to see, please hit me up! Gohandinhand.tumblr.com!

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Big One, folks! Alice's origin story, to be told in three parts (which I hope to have out without too much delay).


End file.
